


when the frightened cattle break

by dorypop



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Comes Home from College, Adam Parrish-centric, Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Background Relationship, Child Abuse, College Student Adam Parrish, Dissociation, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Multi, POV Adam Parrish, Past Child Abuse, Sickfic, Thanksgiving Dinner, That's it, Vomiting, adam and ronan are dating by this point, adam is seven years old, also i haven't read the sampler, and don't plan on doing so, and suddenly adam gets deaged, and to various teachers that are obviously oc, ashley and declan are dating, but adam's thought process includes references to his abuse, but he doesn't remember going to college so it doesn't really count, but i'm not sure if ashley will actually make an appearance so yeah, but they don't keep dating when adam gets deaged, deaged!adam parrish, hence the warnings, just in case you were wondering lol, like they appear but adam doesn't really care they're dating or whatever so, sarchengsey is also very background, so basically the lynches are celebrating the holiday, so please no spoilers!, there will be no explicit violent scenes, welcome to thanksgiving at the barns, well it's in the past but not for adam who has no memory beyond being seven, with adam and ashley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-10-28 01:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20770436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorypop/pseuds/dorypop
Summary: “Let’s find you some clothes too. How old are you? I’ll bring you something down from the attic.”Adam clamped down that smile. He wasn’t going to leave before breakfast, fine, but he wasn’t about to give these strangers any more information than necessary.“I’d rather not say, sir,” he said, feeling very grownup for taking such a cautious approach.Declan laughed while Ronan groaned while scrubbing his face with his hand.“Call me Ronan. I’ll— I’ll bring some boxes down, you pick whatever you like. Sounds good?”(Thanksgiving at the Barns with the Lynches plus Ashley and Adam, suddenly Adam gets deaged; angst makes an appearance.)





	1. Chapter 1

Adam couldn’t remember the last time he’d fallen from his bed. He was almost completely certain he’d never slept in any other bed than the one on his room at the trailer, and in this mess of puffy bedding and total disorientation he kept trying and failing to rack his brain for a previous time in which he’d woken up on the floor, strangled by sheets.

But he couldn’t assure it’d never happened before and that left him anxious even before he was awake enough to realize there was a soft rug shielding him from the cold floor and no pajamas to shield him from the fluffiness of the grey covers.

His bedding wasn’t grey, of that he was sure.

He’d never slept naked before, either, and he almost shrieked before he caught himself. He promptly climbed back to the bed, carefully covering every part of himself with the heavy comforter.

His bed croaked when he moved. Sometimes, his dad could hear that from the other side of the wall and would come pounding or yelling or pouring freezing water on Adam’s bed, like that one time when they’d been trapped by a snow storm, to wake him and make him shut up.

But this bed was completely silent when Adam crawled on it, searching the tangled sheets for his clothes.

This was not his bed.

This wasn’t even his room, and that made him pause for a second because there was no need to get all worked up if his dad wasn’t going to come raging any moment through the door.

Adam glanced briefly through the room, looking for said door. He finally found one, further away than the one on his own room, because this room was big and nice and totally wrong.

The door was closed.

The room was empty.

Adam swallowed.

He saw what looked like a crumpled hoodie lying on the floor, next to a pair adult-sized jeans that he immediately dismissed.

The hoodie was also adult-sized but Adam couldn’t find anywhere his pajamas shirt so he put that in. It was really weird to be wearing something that had too long sleeves instead of them being too short to hide bruises and growing spurts, but Adam rolled them a bit and felt a bit better when he realized it was a really warm hoodie. He also found a pair of, he hoped, clean boxers, that were again too big but didn’t feel too uncomfortable when he put them on.

He breathed when he noted nobody had entered the room while he changed, smiling a bit because he didn’t really like when his mom suddenly entered his room to tell him he’d missed breakfast already because he hadn’t hurried up enough.

He was aware he was probably stealing these clothes. He hoped their owner wouldn’t be terribly mad. He couldn’t remember how he’d ended sleeping in this room with grey covers on the big bed and a sloppy line of toys on each shelf.

He briefly considered making the bed he’d made such a mess of, but then he told himself he needed to get out of this place as soon as possible and he’d waste a lot of time if he tried to clean up.

The door knob didn’t make a sound either when Adam turned it, very relieved that he hadn’t been locked in in the nice room. He’d actually never been locked in, but he remembered that one time in which he’d been late from school because the nurse had wanted to talk to him and when he’d finally arrived home it was dark already and his mom had refused to let him in until his dad had arrived for work hours later. He’d had to go to bed without dinner because his mom had said the house wasn’t a restaurant and he had to understand if he wasn’t at the table at six he wouldn’t get anything at all, while she served a reheated plate of sticky pasta in front of his dad.

The door opened to a corridor with pictures on the walls and no sight of dust on the corners. Adam was glad his barefoot, hurried steps didn’t awake the floors either, because there were some other closed doors on the corridor and he didn’t think it’d be a good idea to disturb anyone who was sleeping behind them.

The stairs to go down where just in front of the open door to a bathroom. Adam suddenly realized he needed to pee, but he again decided against it.

He wasn’t about to pee while he was still trapped in this unknown house, and he couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

He went downstairs slowly, minding his step, but even so he couldn’t help but land on two shrieking planks that made his presence known to whoever was fumbling around in what had to be a kitchen.

“Adam?” someone said. It was a male, but Adam didn’t think he recognized the voice.

He jumped the rest of the steps and darted towards the front door, that was thankfully open.

He didn’t get too far, though, because when he was finally outside he found himself looking at a nightmare.

“Hey, you hungry enough for pancakes?” The voice was following him, he’d not even closed the door.

But he had nowhere to escape, because the house didn’t open into a normal street, or even one of the gravel paths that led to each of the trailers on the trailer park.

The most beautiful nightmare out of Adam’s normal ugly ones consisted of a wide, open landscape of green fields, with a ghost of blue mountains just at the back of the picture.

His mind was working so fast that he didn’t realize he’d been remembering how back in first grade his art teacher had told him he did well in painting mountains in blue because that meant they were far away. Natalie Nicholson, who’d been sitting next to him, had been laughing at his choice of colors for the art assignment. He understood his teacher was probably right, but he hadn’t wanted to let Natalie Nicholson laugh at him so he’d called her names he knew he shouldn’t have used and then his art teacher’s eyebrows had fallen in disappointment at Adam and she’d said she’d have to call his parents if he kept doing that to his friends. He wasn’t friends with Natalie Nicholson, but he’d never again colored his mountains blue.

“What the fuck,” someone said, and Adam quickly turned his back to the blue mountains and found himself looking at a guy with no hair and an apron.

He took a step back.

The porch’s floor was a bit damp from the dew and the fog and Adam shrunk his toes.

“Adam?” the guy said. He was younger than Adam had firstly thought—he probably shaved his head instead of being just bald. Adam’s dad wouldn’t approve of someone who shaved his hair. Adam liked him a bit because of that.

He swallowed and forced himself to look calm and relaxed.

“Is this Henrietta?” he asked.

The guy looked to be itching to come closer. Adam was glad he didn’t.

“Singer’s Falls. Just half an hour from Henrietta,” he said.

Adam dared a look to the blue mountains, and he noted the way the sky looked, white and heavy and not-dark. He looked immediately back to the guy, who hadn’t moved.

“It’s past six, isn’t it?”

“Uh? It was… five when I woke up, so yeah, probably.”

Adam took another step back, and suddenly he wasn’t seeing this guy anymore. It was all foggy and cold and damp and he could feel every time his heart beat, behind his ear. The nurse had explained to him how that worked, but he couldn’t make himself remember. He couldn’t either make it go slower. Or stop. If his heart stopped, he wouldn’t bleed anymore, that’s what the nurse had said. Adam’s dad would be happy he wouldn’t get anymore blood on the leatherette trim of the sofa. But he didn’t want to risk it, in case it was true and his mom didn’t cry.

If it was past six, his dad would’ve already woken up. He’d have checked and figured out Adam was not in bed, where he was supposed to be. He’d be mad he’d slept at such a nice bedroom with grey covers. He would still be mad because Adam never said thank you when they gave him new things. Adam’s mom had got new tennis shoes for him for a discounted prize because she’d been collecting coupons at the store. Adam had been too happy when he’d tried his new shoes that didn’t make his feet feel trapped to remember to say thank you.

If his dad had already woken up, Adam would not get home in time to be in bed by the time his dad opened the door.

This was bad.

This was really bad.

Adam’s ribs still hurt when he breathed too deeply, and he was getting afraid so he kept forgetting to breathe shallow breaths, like the nurse had told him to do.

He didn’t even want to listen to the nurse. The nurse didn’t know _anything_.

Why did he keep making mistakes like this?

“Adam?” The guy in the apron was suddenly very close to him, crouched in front of him like he thought that would help.

Adam screamed and he scrambled back until he hit a post from the railing. For a moment it hurt too much and he had to force himself to hold it, because he thought that if he opened his mouth it would _all_ come pouring down outside. He didn’t think anything would be left of him if that happened, though, and again he didn’t want to test if his mom was gonna cry if he died, in case he didn’t like the answer, so he clenched his teeth and waited until it went away.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to see the stranger’s face really close. He was waiting. He didn’t tell Adam to stop faking, nor did he ask if he needed some meds, like last year’s music teacher had done when Adam had freaked out that one time they’d been told their parents would be coming to hear them sing carols at the Christmas festival.

“What’s wrong?” the guy asked. He wasn’t even smiling that stupid smile the nurse would be faking by now, hoping Adam would break down by having one person pretend to be nice so that he could use that against him later.

“Who are you?” Adam asked, and he felt stupid for not having asked that earlier.

The guy blinked and something happened to his face, but he schooled it again really fast. He still didn’t smile.

“My name’s Ronan. This is my house. It’s a farm. It’s called The Barns, because these are barns.” He pointed towards something in the direction of the blue mountains, but when Adam finally looked he realized said barns weren’t far away enough to be blue too. Adam had never seen real barns before, just on TV.

“What am I doing here?”

The guy, this Ronan, sighed. He seemed sad. Adam didn’t care too much for him, but he _did_ think it was better when he didn’t look sad.

“I invited you to celebrate Thanksgiving here, with my brothers,” Ronan said.

Adam gasped, and he immediately berated himself for letting his surprise show. He didn’t remember being invited anywhere to celebrate anything. It _was_ Thanksgiving, sure, but Thanksgiving wasn’t celebrated at the trailer. Adam’s dad used it as an excuse to get drunker or to pick extra shifts at work and sometimes he did both like last year. Adam didn’t like Thanksgiving because it also meant he didn’t have to go to school, but these days the nurse wasn’t leaving him alone and he was glad he didn’t have to think about ways to avoid him for a couple of days.

An engine broke Adam’s concentration and both him and Ronan looked at the road that came from a curve between trees. In a minute, a shiny car appeared and was parked next to the other two, just in front of the house.

Adam shivered when another guy came out of the car and slammed the door shut.

“What the hell, Ronan? Why would you bring a random child to this house, don’t you understand—” The new guy stopped himself when he finally looked up from the phone that had appeared on his hand at some point between him locking his car and him looking at Adam.

He looked a bit like Ronan. Adam wondered if he was one of these brothers of his.

The new guy pocketed both his phone and his car keys and gave Adam the coat he’d been holding on his other hand.

“Here, you look cold,” he said, softly.

Adam didn’t take the coat. It looked like a really nice coat, and it was certainly too big for him.

He hid another shiver by putting his hands on the inside of his hoodie’s front pocket. He wondered whose hoodie it was, with these big Harvard letters printed on the front. Maybe one of these guys had been to Harvard. Adam didn’t know anyone apart from his teachers that had been to college.

He didn’t like any of his teachers very much.

The new guy didn’t seem offended when Adam refused his coat. He left it on the railing and walked up the steps until he was on the porch, too. He also kneeled and Adam realized Ronan had stood up the moment this guy had appeared.

He didn’t trust this guy’s sudden change in attitude, so he glanced briefly at Ronan, who at least had been kind to him.

“When did you get here?” the new guy asked.

Adam shrugged.

“Dunno. Woke up here.”

“Has Ronan shown you around?”

Adam glanced again at Ronan, and when he looked back at new-guy he eyed him more firmly.

“Don’t wanna be shown around. Wanna go home,” he lied. He actually liked how the mountains looked so blue from this porch. You couldn’t see any mountains from the trailer park.

“Can’t,” Ronan said, too quickly.

Adam’s breath quickened, too.

“Are you kidnapping me? Nobody’s gonna pay ransom, so—”

“Don’t be stupid. You’re my guest, didn’t I tell you? You don’t have to leave. You can stay here for as long as you want. We’ll do whatever the hell you want.”

“Ronan, don’t curse.”

Adam didn’t say he’d heard worse. He ogled new-guy and then again at the coat that was unhelpfully displaying how warm and cozy it looked.

“Who are you, then?” he asked.

“Declan.” He extended his hand. Adam waited but he didn’t remove it, so after a while he shook it. Adam didn’t want to think how nice it felt to be shaken hands with. “I’m Ronan’s brother. I’ve come to visit— I used to live here.”

“You’ve come for Thanksgiving.”

“Exactly. Don’t you also have extended family over for Thanksgiving?”

Adam didn’t answer. He didn’t like making small talk, and he was too worried mulling over how he could ask for the coat without looking silly in front of this person who had shaken his hand. And besides, he wasn’t about to tell these very kind strangers that his grandma used to come but hadn’t since his dad had thrown a dinner plate at her.

Declan then looked at Ronan and Adam didn’t like that, so he went back to look at the coat.

Ronan then snorted and picked it up and put it over Adam’s shoulders while Adam remained very, very still.

“Thank you,” he rushed, blushing, eyes fixed on Ronan’s kind ones.

“Guys! You seen Adam?” Someone opened the front door. “Can’t find him anywhere—”

“Adam’s here, bud.” Ronan was straightening again and Adam felt the very stupid need to hide behind him, but then another boy was there looking at him and Adam glared.

“Oh,” he said. “_Oh_. Hi!”

Adam narrowed his eyes. He was getting a headache.

“Adam, this is Matthew,” Declan helpfully said.

“Yay, I’m Matthew! I was actually looking for you.” Matthew kept bouncing and _smiling_ and Adam felt very tired all of a sudden.

“Why?”

“Wanted to make you a _great_ breakfast as thank you for your help with my homework.”

“My help?”

Adam was starting to think there was something very wrong with his memory. That, or all these people were in the know and ganging on him to make him feel stupid and forgetful and totally silly.

“Doesn’t matter. You hungry, though? What would you like?” Adam startled when he realized Ronan had also asked him that and felt a very warm feeling that had nothing to do with the coat and the hoodie at the thought of people asking him if he wanted to eat.

He forced himself to swallow that down.

“I _can’t_ stay for breakfast,” he said. “I gotta go home—”

“It’s a long weekend,” Ronan said. “What would you like to do?”

Adam looked at him. He was way taller than him and he supposed he looked a bit menacing with that shaved hair and the way he was wearing an apron like he dared anyone to comment on that. Adam thought he’d want to be like him when he grew up.

He really didn’t want to go find out what his dad had said when he’d discovered Adam wasn’t home.

“Breakfast sounds good, I guess,” he muttered, in a very low voice, before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to mutter and looked up.

But Ronan was _now_ smiling, even though it didn’t look like his dad’s frightening smile or the nurse's fake smile. It looked nice and Adam felt like smiling a bit too.

“Let’s find you some clothes too. How old are you? I’ll bring you something down from the attic.”

Adam clamped down that smile. He wasn’t going to leave before breakfast, _fine_, but he wasn’t about to give these _strangers_ any more information than necessary.

“I’d rather not say, sir,” he said, feeling very grownup for taking such a cautious approach.

Declan laughed while Ronan groaned while scrubbing his face with his hand.

“Call me Ronan. I’ll— I’ll bring some boxes down, you pick whatever you like. Sounds good?”

It sounded more than good, but Adam didn’t let himself enjoy that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here I am again! This is really not how I do things, because I normally have at least a semblance of an outline and some kind of excuse for my plot points. But, well, I just wanted to show kid!Adam being taken care of. I've actually got some ideas on things I want to explore but if you wanna see something else or you have some headcanons, please PLEASE don't hesitate to leave a comment!! Or you can also come talk to me [ on tumblr ](https://hklnvgl.tumblr.com): hklnvgl  
In fact, I spent a ridiculous amount of time last Sunday making [ these edits ](https://hklnvgl.tumblr.com/post/187882803235/so-this-is-an-idea-for-a-fic-that-im-working-on) that would cronologically go just after this first chapter, so please go check them out. 
> 
> This is really the most self indulgent thing I've ever written.
> 
> Title from the poem Youth and Age by Vance Palmer.
> 
> Also, if you like deaged!Adam fics, I'd recommend you check [Sometimes I Wish Life Was Boring ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20706641)by LiterallyLen, and [Soft Places Sharp Spaces, ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9111145/chapters/20709514) by cherishadamparrish.


	2. Chapter 2

Ronan left and Matthew guided him back to the house and into the kitchen. It was a very nice and open kitchen, and it smelled like clean, and when Matthew opened the fridge Adam could see what looked like food for a thousand people. Declan politely asked if he still wanted to wear the coat inside and they made him sit and even gave him a glass of milk. Adam suddenly remembered he still wanted to go to the bathroom but he didn’t want to say and ruin this, because Matthew kept chatting and everyone looked relaxed and nice so he forced himself to drink a bit of the milk because he didn’t want to appear ungrateful.

He looked around and didn’t pay much attention to Matthew’s conversation because it seemed pretty one-sided and it was really nice but also a little too much.

The cupboards were wooden and some of them were a bit scratched and Adam wondered what it was like to wake up everyday and walk into this kitchen, where there was even a window that made such a foggy morning look sunny and bright.

He discovered a very healthily-looking peppermint plant next to the sink. Adam knew it was peppermint because the nurse had one in his office and Adam had asked him about it that one time two months ago when he’d given up and went to him to ask for some painkillers when he’d suspected his arm might be broken and—

Suddenly there was something touching his shoulder and Adam startled and flinched and his hand moved on his own and the milk soaked his hoodie and the table and the floor and Matthew’s socked feet.

Ronan took his hand away.

Adam looked at him and waited for the screams or the pain or the moment in which they’d tell him he needed to leave.

“It’s not broken!” Matthew said. Adam saw him put the empty glass away on the sink from the corner of his eye.

Ronan was not moving.

“I’m sorry,” Adam tried, but when he spoke his voice sounded mumbled and small and he realized that was not a proper apology so he looked down to try and get the courage to try again. It was the wrong thing to do, because he then saw the wet stain next to the H on his hoodie, and he felt the moisture starting to come to his eyes. For a while, he’d been trying to train himself out of that nasty and useless habit he had of crying, but it seemed he was useless at that, too.

He sniffled without really meaning to and took his trembling hands to cover his mouth, to try and keep the sobs inside.

“Adam.” Ronan took his hands away from his face.

He was gentle and careful, but Adam took his hand back.

“Did that hurt you? Sorry.”

Adam was having trouble controlling his breathing, so he didn’t have the space in his brain to try to understand what was happening.

“What?”

“Does it hurt when I touch you?”

“What?” Adam had never been asked that. Only the nurse ever asked things like that, and he always phrased them like it was Adam’s fault he was hurting because he didn’t like telling the nurse about it. “Doesn’t hurt. Feels funny. I—“ Adam stopped himself. What he wanted was ask if Ronan was mad. He hadn’t meant to drop the glass or to spill the milk, and he certainly hadn’t meant to stain the hoodie. But asking anyone if they were mad was always a bad idea, so he didn’t. His other option was to keep apologizing, but there was so much stuff that could go wrong with that.

He didn’t have any more ideas.

Adam didn’t know what to do, and he always got nervous when that happened.

“Are you hurt right now?” Ronan asked.

Adam blinked, grateful he wasn’t showing any tears.

Ronan’s questions didn’t make any sense. He figured they must be a trick. They were probably pretending they were nice and liked him but they would laugh at him when he fell for it, or slap his food away, or lock him outside, or— Or—

Adam blinked again. It must have been a long time, because Ronan had sat down next to him. Those stools were cool, Adam thought—the kind of cool his mother would frown at when she saw them on someone’s home on TV.

Ronan still didn’t seem mad. He was waiting.

Adam was a bit angry at himself for making him wait.

“I’m sorry,” he tried again, and it sounded right this time.

“Are you hurt?” Ronan repeated. “In pain?”

“No,” Adam lied. He was, but that wasn’t important. It was normal, after all—his ribs hadn’t had time to heal properly yet.

Ronan eyed him before nodding decidedly.

“You’re trembling,” he said. Adam felt himself blush. “I’ve left you some clothes upstairs. Matthew offered to sleep with Declan, so you can have his room. Is that okay?”

Adam hadn’t planned to sleep here, but he found himself nodding eagerly.

“Does Matthew’s room have a lock?” he asked, after a moment. If they weren’t talking about the milk, he wasn’t going to bring it up.

“Uh? It doesn’t. Why?”

Adam scrunched his nose.

“Why was I naked when I woke up? Did you remove my clothes? Are you this kind of people, who—?”

The tears that Adam was so proud of having contained before started spilling. He shut up.

Ronan stood up, but he didn’t hit his head for making noise or for being annoying. He just hovered there and breathed and waited until Adam was ready to listen again.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry”, Ronan whispered. “You’re safe here. I’ll get you a lock for the room, if that’s what you want. Do you— Do you have one at home?”

Adam shook his head and promptly wiped his face with the back of his hand.

“I’d like one, though. I— When I grow up, I’m gonna have a place as beautiful as this one but with locks on the door, and nobody’s gonna be able to come in if I don’t wanna.”

Ronan nodded and if felt like he was _really_ listening to Adam.

“Okay.”

“I’ll clean this,” Adam offered, pointing to the stain on the hoodie.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. We’ll wash it. No big deal.”

“Is it yours?”

Ronan smiled then.

“My boyfriend’s,” he simply said, like that wasn’t a very brave thing to say. “Here, come. I’ll show you to your room.”

Ronan offered his hand and, after a few seconds, Adam took it. Actually, the more he thought about it, the more he liked holding Ronan’s hand.

Upstairs, in what Ronan said was Matthew’s room, there were some boxes, with labels like _R-6yo _or _D-8yo_ up front, in black sharpie. Adam was surprised at the amount of clothes that must fit in each of these boxes—his own clothes from when he was smaller were reused as cleaning rags or, if they were in a fine enough condition, resold at the same thrift shops where his mom had bought them in the first place. He hadn’t thought it was possible to just _keep_ your old clothes, when they didn’t fit anymore.

“Pick whatever you like.” Ronan’s voice startled him. When Adam turned around, he was already changing the bed sheets.

It’d been years since Adam’s mom had changed his bed sheets. He noted the covers were orange instead of grey, like in the other one room. He wondered how much time he’d have to save money to be able to afford such bright covers for his own bed.

“I can do that,” he said, when he realized it’d take him a very long time, unless he found some extra source of income apart from the money his grandma still sent him on his birthday. He suddenly gasped when he remembered his dad had told him back in July he’d watch over that money for a while, until Adam had decided what he wanted to buy with it, and then he’d never given it back.

Ronan was already looking at him, quite strangely, when their eyes met.

“You’re a guest, remember?”

Adam didn’t, as he didn’t remember how he’d arrived at the house. He nodded.

“I’m gonna go find you some towels and a toothbrush, too, kay? Anything else you need? I’ll put a lock on the door as well.”

Adam breathed deeply, ignoring the painful cries from his ribs. It still might be a trick, like a lock that could also be opened from the outside. Adam didn’t know very much about locks.

But these were nice clothes in very well organized boxes and no-one had yelled at him yet for making his borrowed hoodie dirty.

“Thank you, sir.”

Ronan snorted.

“Ronan,” he corrected.

“Oh. Right. I forgot. Ronan.”

He smiled. Adam smiled, too.

“That’s right.”

“It’s a pretty name,” Adam suddenly said, feeling stupid the moment the words left his mouth.

Ronan kneeled in front of him; he was a bit shorter than Adam when he did that. Why did everyone in this house keep doing that, Adam had no clue.

“Thanks. Yours is a pretty name, too.” He touched Adam’s nose briefly and Adam felt like crying again. “Matthew doesn’t use this part of the closet anymore— all his clothes are in DC anyway. I’ll tell him to get everything he needs out of here, okay?”

Adam nodded and he started going through the clothes. He didn’t want to disturb the tidily folded shirts and pants very much, so he picked the first shirt inside the box labeled as _M-6yo_, discovered it was too small, and decided to keep the first shirt on the box _M-7yo_. It was cold, though, so he kept looking in the same box and found another hoodie and a pair of jeans. The hoodie was a bit short on the sleeves but the shirt kept his wrists hidden so he didn’t think it mattered much.

When he went to change into the jeans, he realized there wasn’t any underwear in the boxes. Logically, Adam knew it made sense not to keep old underwear around. He of course wasn’t going to ask Ronan or any of his brothers for new underwear, so he decided to keep the big boxers he was already wearing on.

He was putting away what he’d taken out of the boxes when he heard a soft knock on the door.

His breath shortened, but nobody entered just yet.

“May I come in,” someone said, though, from the outside.

Adam looked at himself, as if to check he was indeed clothed and he hadn’t touched anything he hadn’t been supposed to touch, before answering.

“Sure?” He hadn’t meant for it to sound like a question.

“Hey,” Declan said. “You alright?”

Adam nodded, quite emphatically. He took the dirty Harvard hoodie from where it rested next to his bare feet.

“Do you think the stains will come out?”, he asked.

“Yeah, it’s just milk. Leave it to me. Listen, when I was coming back from the airport I saw an open store. Do you need anything? Ronan’s found you a toothbrush.”

Adam hadn’t even realized he’d need a toothbrush, but he felt really happy both of them had actually found the time to produce him one. He had meant to brush his teeth more frequently since the nurse had been to his classroom to give a talk about it something like a month earlier. Not that he liked the nurse any better for it, but he’d shown them some slides and they’d seem legit.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Do any of the clothes fit?” Declan eyed the short sleeves of his hoodie, but didn’t keep asking when Adam nodded. “Do you have shoes?”

“I have new tennis shoes. But they’re at home, I think.” He frowned. “How did I get here, anyway?”

“Don’t know.”

“Did Ronan bring me?”

“Maybe your parents did,” Declan suggested.

Adam shrugged.

“Don’t think so, no.” He couldn’t picture his parents bringing him to such a nice house to leave him there.

“It doesn’t really matter. You sure you don’t need anything?”

Adam sighed quietly. It did matter to him, but he knew when to stop asking questions. He was going to shake his head once more, but something made him stop.

“Hm. Well. Do you have underwear my size?” he whispered, blushing a little.

But Declan nodded like it was nothing.

“Ah. No, I don’t think we do. Noted. Anything else?”

Adam looked at the floor.

“Well—Maybe some socks?”

“And shoes, too, right?”

Adam didn’t want to ask for the shoes. He didn’t even _like_ wearing shoes. He hardly ever did at the trailer, and he wouldn’t if his mom hadn’t smacked him that one time he’d opened the front door barefoot.

He shrugged again, even though he _knew_ that was a really disrespectful thing to do when someone was having a conversation with him.

“I’ll be right back, then. You didn’t eat anything. You should come down.”

Declan was about to leave the room when Adam regained his bearings enough to look up.

“I—” he started. Declan turned. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Last door on the corridor,” he said. Adam already knew that, but he relaxed a bit knowing he had permission to go there.

“Thank you.”

Declan nodded. Adam waited until he heard him downstairs to peek outside the room. He ran to the bathroom and closed the door, which fortunately did have a lock.

He breathed. It hurt.

He pulled both the hoodie and the shirt up his stomach and he peeked at the healing bruises there and up his chest. The looked fine, already fading on the left side. He also got his sleeves all the way up to inspect his arms by the powerful light in the bathroom—the bruises there were newer, so they still looked more purple than yellow. He nodded to himself and carefully hid them all before peeing.

Declan had left Ronan’s boyfriend’s hoodie on Matthew’s bed, so Adam took it with him when he returned downstairs.

Matthew was in the kitchen with a girl about Adam’s size.

She shrieked when she saw Adam.

Adam didn’t make a habit of flinching from people his size, so he didn’t. He wrinkled his nose instead. Only then did he notice the girls’ legs looked furry. He didn’t ask.

“Here. Ronan said to make pancakes. What do you want with yours?” Matthew asked.

“Where’s Ronan?” Adam asked. He wanted to try and get the stains out of the hoodie.

“Kerah is yelling at Declan back there,” the girl said.

Adam blinked. He didn’t like yelling, so he resolved he’d stay away from Declan and whoever he was arguing with. He was a bit sad Declan had already forgotten he’d promised to go looking for some underwear for Adam, but he told himself it was alright and after all something to be expected.

“Do you have a laundry room or something?” Adam asked, because he’d seen these things on TV and Natalie Nicholson had told him once she had such a room at her own house. “Or do you have some stain-remover?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t go well with pancakes. I prefer metal spoons,” the girl said.

Adam blinked again and looked at Matthew, at whom he’d originally been talking. But Matthew winked and didn’t explain, so Adam looked back to the girl.

“What?”

“I can show you, if you want, though,” she said.

“Who are you?” Adam asked.

She narrowed her clear eyes and tsked.

“Who are _you_?”

“Okay,” Matthew said with a big smile. “This is Opal. Tell Ronan and Dec that the pancakes are ready.”

Opal shrieked again and she took Adam’s hand. It felt rough, like tree bark. Adam liked tree bark.

She guided him through a corridor by the end of the kitchen he hadn’t noticed earlier, towards what looked effectively like a laundry room. Ronan was there, loading a washing machine with the sheets he’d previously removed from Matthew’s room. Declan was there, too, frowning and hissing at his brother.

Nobody was yelling, for which Adam was glad.

“Kerah! Adam wants stain-remover with his pancakes!” Opal shouted. Adam stubbornly refused to be startled, but shot her an angry look that she promptly ignored. “Also Matthew says they’re ready. Gonna go pick some leaves for mine. Bye!” She left through the same door they’d both come from.

Adam missed her touch on his hand.

“Do you?” Ronan asked, arching an eyebrow at Adam.

“What?” Adam realized he meant the stain-remover. “No. Yes. Not for the pancakes. For this,” he explained, showing Ronan the hoodie.

“Here, let’s put it in here too,” he said, pointing to the washing machine. It must be nice, Adam thought, having one of those at home and being able to use it whenever, instead of having to wait until they had enough dirty clothes or enough money to go to the laundromat.

“Right, I’ll go to the store real quick.” Adam stared, very glad he hadn’t forgotten after all. “Don’t leave Gansey panicking for too long.”

“You don’t want pancakes?” Adam asked.

“I had breakfast with Ashley at the airport. Be right back.” He also left.

Adam didn’t know if he’d have preferred to have him there at breakfast with everyone else or if he wanted more to be able to change into comfortable underwear.

“Who’s Ashley?” he asked Ronan.

“His girlfriend.” He took a bottle out of a shelf full of such an amount and variety of cleaning supplies that Adam wondered if they had more here than at the store. “Here, wanna put it in?” He was holding the stain-remover. Adam poured some of the liquid directly onto the H—it felt very satisfying to see it soaking the fabric where the milk had spilled.

“Is she also invited?”

“Ashley? Yeah, but she had to leave early today. She flew back to spend the rest of the break with her family or some shit.

Adam giggled when Ronan’s pocket lit up. He closed the washing machine door, though, without removing his phone from said pocket.

“Not gonna answer?”

“That’s Gansey. He’s in Vancouver. Declan will talk to him.”

“Is he friends with Declan, too?”

Ronan snorted and pressed the buttons on the washing machine, which started roaring.

“What do _you_ want with your pancakes?”

In the end, he tried them with syrup like Ronan’s and fruit like Matthew’s, but his favorite were with cinnamon and sugar and lemon juice, which were apparently Declan’s favorite and Ronan said he should try. He didn’t try Opal’s pancakes because she put actual leaves in them and that seemed like something the school nurse would advise against eating.

When Declan came back, he put a packet of boxers, six pairs of colorful socks and a pair of brand new tennis shoes in front of Adam.

“Shit. I forgot,” Ronan said.

Adam swallowed, feeling all his blood rush to his cheeks at the sight of the shoes. He almost regretted eating such delicious pancakes because he kind of wanted to throw up.

“How much was that?” he asked Declan with a very small voice.

“Thanksgiving present,” Declan said. When Adam dared to look, he was smiling softly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unedited as always, so please forgive any typos! If you wanna see some extra content, I made some [edits ](https://hklnvgl.tumblr.com/post/187882803235/so-this-is-an-idea-for-a-fic-that-im-working-on) to go in between last chapter and this one, and I also have some more for a couple of chapters later (this is set Friday morning, so around Saturday).
> 
> Next time we'll get some shitty and not-ver-logical explanation to what is happening, but as I don't wanna raise your hopes I'll just say here you shouldn't expect a very deep and thoughtful plot because hm no. I have ideas for at least two more chapters and maybe a third one as a sort of epilogue, but again if you have any ideas/suggestions/headcanons/whatever you should definitely leave a comment and let me know so I can include them. I'm really enjoying writing this and letting all my feelings get in the middle of everything so :)
> 
> (for some reason Adam keeps having no underwear in my fics. Regret nothing)


	3. Chapter 3

Matthew insisted he wanted to help Adam unpack because, he said, it was really fun looking at their old clothes and remembering what it had felt like to wear them and he then had made a face when Ronan had told him he needed to clean up in the kitchen and that he should take Adam upstairs already, so in the end Ronan had come to the unpacking-party, as Matthew had labeled it, too.

Adam didn’t know Matthew enough to guess if that was conscious manipulation —the nurse kept telling him things like that and he would talk endlessly about something called _gaslighting_ and Adam kept trying to avoid him but the nurse kept asking his teachers to excuse him and forced him to listen to what he wanted to say— or if Matthew was as clueless as Ronan seemed to be. He didn’t mind much, though, because when they held things Adam didn’t like, like short-sleeved shirts or that really ugly jacket with pumpkin-shaped pockets, they didn’t get angry or tell him to keep them anyway. They simply moved to the next item, and Matthew would tell a story, and Ronan would curse and amend said story removing what apparently were Matthew’s imagination’s add-ons.

That was, until a bell rang somewhere downstairs and Ronan suddenly straightened up and told them to keep quiet while Declan answered the door.

Adam tensed and strained to hear what was going on, but he couldn’t really make much, apart from Declan shouting for Ronan after a few minutes.

Ronan sighed, and only then he noticed the firm grip Adam had on the pair of jeans he’d been folding.

He touched Adam’s hand so softly it made him shiver.

“Hey. It’s alright. I’m gonna go see who’s that, but you can stay here with Matthew.”

Adam nodded because he understood Ronan was in a hurry and didn’t have time to spare to soothe him, but he surprised himself when he realized what he really, _really_ wanted was for Ronan to keep touching his hand.

He left the door ajar and Adam stood up promptly and closed it with the lock that Ronan had installed just after breakfast.

Matthew started telling him a story of some time they’d baked a great strawberry cake, back when their parents had both been alive, but Adam didn’t have the energy nor the ability to keep worrying his insides out and feel sorry for them being orphans at the same time. He of course knew other people’s parents were not like his own parents. He saw what they were like when they picked their children up at school. But he also thought that, if he was old enough to be able to live on his own _and_ he had a house as nice as the Barns was, he wouldn’t miss his parents very much, even if he couldn’t see them often. Or, like, ever —if they died.

He realized he’d zoned out when he came back to himself because there was pounding on the door.

Well— it was less like pounding and more like sharp knocking, but it startled him nonetheless.

Matthew stood up and went to the door, but hesitated before opening the lock.

“Should I— uh—?”

“It’s blue’s mom!” Ronan said from the outside, which didn’t help at all in reassuring Ronan because it didn’t make any sense in the first place. But he guessed if Ronan thought it was okay then he could pretend for a bit he was okay too.

He nodded at Matthew.

Both Ronan and Declan came in, followed by a woman who Adam didn’t know and who looked pretty normal. Adam forced himself to appear relaxed, because he didn’t trust people who looked normal on the outside.

“Ah,” she said. “I see.”

She had sharp eyes who made Adam really uncomfortable with all their studying and registering. He forced his face to remain calm.

“So?” Ronan seemed a bit nervous when Adam looked at him and that made him start to lose his own grip. Matthew coughed when the silence took too long, and Adam reminded himself to breathe calmly and regularly, not to shake his ribs too much.

“Yeah, I’m glad I brought it,” the woman said, and started rummaging inside a bag she was carrying. She took out a pot like those ones people used to fill with jam in the picture books Adam read at the school library, but there didn’t seem to be jam inside it. Actually, it was something like crunched leaves. “Here, for your stomach.” She handed the pot to Adam, but he didn’t make any move to take it.

He knew better than to accept strange gifts from strange people he didn’t know. And his stomach kept jumping but he wasn’t about to tell her that, so he kept quiet and very still.

Ronan took the pot from her and threw it at the bed, where it landed on the soft covers.

“What the fuck is it?” he asked.

“You should calm down, dear, if you don’t want to provoke Adam here a heart attack.”

“What?” Ronan swirled violently and Adam took a step back. He eyed them both carefully and swallowed, but it did nothing to release the knot behind his throat.

He only let himself exhale when he felt Declan’s hand on his shoulder. It was a stronger grip than would’ve normally been comfortable, because he still had some bruises there from the previous week’s baseball match, but at that moment he appreciated how the extra pain kept his mind from wandering at such a moment.

Declan said something he didn’t quite catch, because he was really worried with Ronan and the woman.

She nodded.

“Don’t worry about it. The universe is just settling itself. It’ll all be alright in a couple of days.”

“What the hell are you—”

“I’ll tell Blue you’re all alive. She’s coming tonight,” she said, before turning around and leaving with fast steps.

Adam shrugged off Declan’s hand the moment he heard her coming down the stairs.

“I’ll go see her out,” Matthew said, although by then she was probably already outside.

“I don’t like that woman coming so freely to our house,” Declan said, and if Adam hadn’t been paying attention he’d have said it was like any other conversation. But he was, so he realized there was something else hidden there, something Adam didn’t like.

“Well, it isn’t _your_ damn house, so why don’t you fuck off,” Ronan hissed.

It was as if they’d forgotten Adam was in the room. In Adam’s experience, that was a really _bad_ situation, because the moment he moved a bit louder they’d remember he was there, witnessing something he wasn’t supposed to witness, and they’d want to make him forget what he’d seen and heard.

It never worked, because he _always_ remembered, but he knew better than to point that out.

“You need to control yourself better. You need to understand you can’t let your emotions dictate how you—”

“What I _need_ is you not telling me what to feel.”

“_Ronan_.”

“What.”

Here it came. Adam would have crawled under the bed, but if he moved he could make it worse. He kept his eyes locked on his new socks, which were really nice socks, warm and fuzzy and each pair in the packet was a different color, so he got to choose.

He waited.

He could hear Ronan’s deep breaths, but he didn’t keep talking.

He risked a quick glance at him.

Ronan had sat on the bed, making the mattress dip and the pot from the strange lady roll towards him. He had his head on his arms and his arms on his knees.

Adam thought he should say something to make it better for him, but he wasn’t very good at comforting and he knew they were mad at him anyway so he kept quiet.

Declan was looking out the window.

“Ronan,” he said, softer, after a while.

“I know. Just— I know.”

“I’ll go check if Matthew has more homework,” Declan said, before leaving. Adam thought it must be nice, having people remind you to do your homework. Not that Adam forgot often, but sometimes he hurt so badly that he only remembered he was supposed to have done some sums or read something when it was late and he was in bed and not allowed to light a lamp.

“Adam,” Ronan called, looking at him.

Adam didn’t say anything, because he didn’t want to make it worse.

“I freaked you out, didn’t I?”

“No,” Adam lied.

Ronan smirked.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Sorry,” he repeated, after removing the smile from his face. “Come here?” he motioned for Adam to sit next to him.

Adam hesitated but finally obeyed.

He sat and waited, but Ronan didn’t seem in a hurry to start talking.

“What is this?” Adam finally asked, holding the pot.

“Uh, some tea, I think. It’ll probably taste like penguin’s shit, so don’t rush to try it.”

Adam thought comparing tea to penguin’s shit was really funny, but he didn’t laugh. He studied the tea inside the pot.

“My mom used to be on a diet that had her drink some awful tea, too. She hated it so much she stopped dieting after a couple of weeks,” Adam said.

“Do you miss her?”

Adam inhaled slowly, then shrugged.

“Normal kids miss their moms when they’re away,” he said, quietly, after a bit.

“You _are_ normal, Adam.”

Adam shrugged again. His dad didn’t like it when he shrugged.

“Guess so.”

Ronan hummed.

“That was— that was Blue’s mom.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ah— Blue is Gansey’s girlfriend. They’re in Vancouver with Henry’s family.”

Adam remembered Ronan mentioning this Gansey who was in Vancouver.

“Who’s Henry?”

“When you ask Gansey, he says he’s just their friend,” he lowered his voice, “but when A— I mean, my boyfriend asks Blue, she tells him to fuck off, _so_”

“So?”

“So I think they’re dating, all three of them.”

Adam didn’t know that was a thing people could do, but he didn’t like this Blue’s mom very much and he didn’t know if he wanted to meet the daughter, so he didn’t press for more information.

“Are you okay?” he asked, instead.

“What?” Ronan didn’t seem to be expecting the question, but he recovered quickly. “Sure. Sure, I’m awesome.”

Adam didn’t really believe that.

“I think I can tell when you’re lying to me,” he said, slowly, because that was a very dangerous thing to say.

Ronan looked like he’d swallowed a lemon when he looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“What for?”

“I don’t want to lie to you.”

“People lie all the time.”

Ronan smiled, but he didn’t look happy.

“I know.” Adam wished he’d go back to touching his hand, like he’d done before, but Ronan didn’t and he didn’t ask. “Hey, wanna come see the chicken?”

Chicken turned out to be bigger than Adam had thought, but Ronan didn’t rub it in when Adam confessed he’d never seen a living chicken before. He patiently showed him how to feed them and how to clean their coop and he told him all their names, which were ridiculous things like Forklift and Snowcat and Susie —Ronan said his boyfriend had named that one.

They then went to see the cows, which were way bigger than chicken and totally scary, but Ronan made him come closer to them and helped him make friends with a cow named Skidder and when Ronan said it was lunchtime he was hugging Skidder because Skidder was warm and she made his skin less itchy.

They ate leftover sandwiches Declan had made from the things that were in the fridge, because Ronan had apparently cooked way too much for Thanksgiving and they’d be eating from that until Christmas at least, and then they all played videogames in the living room until Matthew asked Ronan for help with his homework and Ronan kicked up a big fuss but ended helping him anyway because Declan was busy talking to Ashley on the phone.

Adam got invited to watch, so he perched on the dining table next to Matthew’s books and marveled at the detailed diagrams of the human body high school text books included. He got bored after a bit, though, when Matthew started drilling his brother on ancient facts that had nothing to do with the 19th Century literature he was supposed to be studying and Adam got lost in the immensity of Ronan’s knowledge.

He wandered to the kitchen and found Declan fighting with a coffee machine which was really similar to the one the school principal had been messing with that one time the nurse had forced him to go talk to him. Adam hadn’t of course said anything, so he’d paid a lot of attention to what the principal was doing with the spring that kept the coffee from spilling when the pot wasn’t under the filter.

“If you loosen that before tightening it, it should work,” Adam told Declan. And Declan listened and did exactly that, and after fifteen minutes the whole kitchen smelled like coffee because the coffee machine was fixed.

“No wonder my brother thinks you’re a genius,” Declan said, which Adam didn’t understand.

When Matthew assured them he only had to write one more essay to be done with homework, they set the table for dinner and took out all the leftovers from the fridge and it was truly more food than Adam had ever seen together.

He tried a bit of everything, because nobody told him to stop eating, and then took seconds of almost everything because it was so good he didn’t know when he’d get to eat such a feast ever again. There was even cake for dessert, which he also tried, even though he was so full he wasn’t sure he’d be able to walk upstairs to go to sleep.

He actually got very sleepy when Ronan said to start clearing the table, so he got sent to bed after he’d only carried his empty plate to the kitchen.

“Brush your teeth before bed!” Declan cried from the dining room, and Adam hurried to his bedroom because he didn’t want them to see him blush.

He brushed his teeth carefully and put his brand new yellow toothbrush next to the others on the sink and quickly undressed and wore Ronan’s old pajama pants with a T-shirt with a big smiley at the front he was told had belonged to Declan.

The shirt was actually short-sleeved but he planned to get dressed again before going downstairs in the morning, so he felt really happy the moment his head hit the pillow.

It was a really comfy pillow, after all.

He was asleep in less than a minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In some other world I’d have learned by now to write in short sentences. In this one, apparently, I’ve decided they fit a child’s POV narrative, so I’m very proudly keeping them.
> 
> (Also, when did this random school nurse OC become the true hero of this story, I wonder)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: vomiting

Adam was unconsciously awake for a while before becoming aware he wasn’t sleeping anymore. At first he thought that meant his dad had come back home drunk and was bumping into stuff in the main room. That made him go very still, but then he realized he wasn’t in his bed, because it was really hot inside the sheets, and his sheets at home got raspy when he sweated.

He was forcing his foggy brain to completely wake up so it could help him fully diagnose what was keeping him from going back to sleep, so he could fix whatever it was and do just that, when he noticed the pain he was in.

Except it wasn’t that either, because he was used to being in pain, and it normally didn’t prevent him from sleeping.

This was _urgent_ pain.

His stomach was _yelling_ at him to get out of bed.

He stifled a whimper when he tried to get up.

His belly was burning. His ribs and chest got jealous and were burning too, a bit duller. His arms trembled because he had bruises there too and everyone knew bruises behaved better when you got to sleep.

He groaned when he remembered just how much he’d eaten at dinner. How delicious everything had been, how nobody had told him to stop, and how he hadn’t listened when his stomach had begged him for a break.

Sitting on Matthew’s bed didn’t help. Lying down obviously didn’t help. He tried standing up, but he got dizzy so he had to stop by the desk to rest his weight on the chair so he could focus on breathing.

Tiny breaths made the pain kind of bearable, but he felt giddy when he didn’t take enough air. Deep breaths just made his ribs go crazy and did nothing to calm his stomach. He _was_ young but even he knew not breathing wasn’t really an option.

Then, the nausea hit.

The memory of the last time he’d thrown up, too close to the wheels of his dad’s pickup truck for his dad’s comfort, made Adam’s heart flutter. He forced his wobbly legs to move.

He unlocked the door and turned the knob and would have run towards the bathroom if he hadn’t been afraid of tripping and falling.

He suddenly stopped when he heard voices.

They were downstairs, so they came quite muffled. Nobody seemed mad yet.

Nobody had told Adam to actually _stay_ in his room, but they hadn’t said he could roam free at night, either.

He’d have turned back if his stomach hadn’t been pounding at his belly _from the inside_.

He hugged himself and willed his socked feet to walk silently towards the ajar bathroom door.

He then swallowed and felt himself go really hot in the face and next thing he knew he was _loudly_ throwing up on the fine flooring.

He hated throwing up.

The nurse had once said you felt better afterwards, but in Adam’s experience people always got mad when he threw up. There was disgusting puke to clean and puffy cheeks to hide and his head hurt and he felt drained and dirty.

He sometimes was allowed to have a shower after puking, but sometimes his mom made him clean after himself before letting him get into the bathroom. Once, he’d puked on the flowers a neighbor his mom had dragged him to visit was growing and he hadn’t been able to walk properly for three days after.

He’d never felt this sick while having bruises in his ribs before and it felt like he was breaking in two.

Breathing hurt.

_Howling_ hurt.

Dragging himself away from the puke hurt.

He shrieked not unlike Opal because he didn’t remember to keep quiet.

He felt hands slightly probing his chest to keep him upright and he shied away screaching.

Moving hurt.

Crying hurt.

Holding himself up hurt.

He let it go and fell and the hit against the cool, wooden floor took away all the air that had miraculously entered his lungs. He shut up because it was too much to even scream.

“— call an ambulance this instant, this is way more serious than I could have _possibly_ imagined—”

“Will you shut the _fuck_ up, Dick?”

“He’s stopped crying! This can’t be good. Why has he stopped crying?”

“Uh— I don’t think you could explain him being here and all, y’know, to those people who ride ambulances.”

“Well, no, Henry’s right, of course, but we could say something. This is such an extreme situation, if we just let ourselves _think_ for a minute, I’m sure we could come up with—”

There were shoes and socks and bare feet coming and going.

Adam whimpered.

A hand came to rest on his hair. It made him shiver. Shivering hurt, but it also felt good.

Adam didn’t know what was going on anymore.

“Here, give him this.”

“What is it?”

“It was dad’s. He told me— It’s for things like this.”

Someone was asking about something else, but Adam couldn’t focus on things further away than the hand slowly fondling his hair.

“Adam?” He was breathing softly now, and was as motionless as he could manage lying on the floor, and he was probably soaking the wood with his sweat. “Adam, I’m gonna cut your shirt open to apply some bruise cream, okay? You don’t have to move yet, but I’ll have to touch you to spread the cream. Adam?”

Adam swallowed. He tasted like puke.

He was glad he wasn’t retching anymore.

“Ronan?” he muttered.

“Yeah. I’m gonna do it now, 'kay? It might feel funny.”

The hand left his hair.

“Ronan, it hurts,” he cried, and he knew it sounded pathetic. He blinked away some tears and could see Ronan’s knees next to his face.

He heard the scissors cutting. Ronan was wearing fleece pants.

“We’re ruining Declan’s shirt,” Adam whispered.

He felt cold air on his back and he closed his eyes because that meant Ronan was seeing how ugly it was.

“Fucking shitty shit,” someone said, but it wasn’t Ronan.

A hand went back to rest on his hair, but it wasn’t Ronan’s either. Adam sighed, careful not to disturb his ribs.

“Don’t worry about the damn shirt,” Declan said.

He couldn’t help a flinch when something frozen started eating at his back. He took a moment to regain his breath, but after that he relaxed back on the floor, because the more skin the substance covered, the better he felt.

He probably felt asleep while Ronan gently rubbed his back, because he awoke when he felt he was being maneuvered to face the ceiling. He didn’t complain when he found himself resting his head on Declan’s tights while Ronan worked on his chest.

“I ate too much,” Adam said.

Declan nodded, and it was funny because he was upside down.

“Blue’s making you her mom’s tea.”

“Is Blue here?” Adam asked. He didn’t know anymore how he was supposed to feel about that, so he didn’t feel anything.

“She just got here,” Ronan said. “How’s that?”, he asked then, not talking about Blue anymore.

Adam breathed. It still tingled, but it didn’t feel like he was being sawn in half.

“That’s really good,” he said.

Ronan sounded like he was fumbling with something, and then Adam felt him carefully lift his head. He still felt a bit dizzy but he grabbed Ronan’s arm to steady himself. Ronan held him by the armpits and helped him stand up.

He guided him back to his bed, where he arranged the sheets so that when Adam got back in they felt almost like just washed.

“Aren’t you gonna ask?”, Adam whispered, while he watched Ronan looking for clean clothes in the closet. Ronan shrugged and showed him a plain shirt, which was probably green but looked yellow because of the lamp.

“Nah.”

Adam didn’t like it when people asked, like the nurse had done, but he understood that it was a bit suspicious that Ronan still didn’t ask after having seen that. He risked a glance down and checked that the purpling bruises on his chest had almost disappeared thanks to that nice cream, but he knew that wasn’t how it had looked just half an hour ago.

“Why not?” he asked.

“If you want, you can tell me about it,” Ronan said. He came by the bed and narrowed his eyes, probably assessing if Adam would be able to dress himself. He doubted it, because even though it didn’t hurt so much to move anymore, he felt really tired.

“Dunno,” he said, answering both questions. He then realized there hadn’t been any actual questions, and sank back on the fluffy pillows, because that felt really nice.

“Here,” Ronan said, helping him with the shirt. He ruffled Adam’s hair and that felt awesome, too. “Adam?”

“Hm?” He was getting sleepy.

“I’m sorry.”

“What? Why?” He fought to become alert again. He must have missed something important, because people didn’t normally apologize like that, out of the blue. Maybe he was more tired than he thought. Maybe he was being too weird and that was the moment in which Ronan was going to politely ask him to leave.

Asking politely didn’t sound very much like something Ronan would do, though.

Adam waited. Ronan breathed.

“I should have paid more attention. I knew— Fuck. I knew you were in some kind of pain but you’re too damn _good_ at hiding it. And— yeah. I thought it wasn’t _that_ bad. And I should’ve realized you couldn’t stomach that much food. It was insane. So. Sorry.”

Adam blinked. He gaped then, because blinking didn’t help him make much sense of that and he still wanted to go back to sleep.

“Uh— what?” he finally said. “That’s— you don’t—”

He was thankfully interrupted from making more of a fool of himself by a knock on the door. A girl with a crazily colorful scarf and a mug came in.

“Oh, good. You’re still awake. Here you go. Mom said to make sure you emptied it,” she smiled. She had a nice smile, Adam supposed, but he didn’t trust the way her eyes couldn’t stay fixed on his face and kept travelling towards his bare arms. Ronan hadn’t applied bruise cream on his arms, and the shirt he was wearing had short sleeves.

He didn’t make any moves to hold the mug she was offering, but Ronan did that for him.

“This is Blue,” he said. Adam looked at him and he felt himself blush when he saw Ronan knew he didn’t very much like her.

He wasn’t used to caring about things like that. People didn’t like him, he didn’t like people back. No big deal.

“Hi,” he amended, without much energy.

“Penguin shit,” Ronan said, passing him the steamy mug. It had a picture of Washington Monument and said _Come to DC. _Adam wanted to laugh but didn’t trust his ribs to behave much.

“Natalie Nicholson’s grandparents live in DC,” he said, after he had started sipping and had figured it was really awful tea and had realized he hadn’t said thank you.

Blue startled him with a giggle.

“You _know_ Natalie Nicholson. No way.”

Adam didn’t know how to answer that without being rude, so he kept sipping under Ronan’s watch, reminding himself how terrible an idea it would be to start retching just then.

“We sat together in Chemistry for a whole year. Not that I could stand her, mind, but she was _not_ as incompetent as my lab partner last year. We could have blown up several times. Like, literally,” Blue smirked. Her bangs swung when she tilted her head.

“_The_ Natalie Nicholson I know turned eight two weeks ago,” Adam said. He finished his mug with a grimace and Ronan promptly took it from him to put it on his bedside table. He’d never had a bedside table before, so he smiled at Ronan.

“Oh,” Blue said. “Right. You— You go to Henrietta Elementary, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. I mean, I went there.”

“That’s cool,” Adam lied.

“Who do I remember from back then— Hey, you might know the nurse, Mr. Collins? Oh, I loved him! He used to let me skip PE whenever I was too tired of socializing, you know?”

“I know Mr. Collins,” Adam said, very carefully. He hadn’t thought he’d been a nurse at that school for so long as to have been working there when Blue was a student, but he supposed he just looked young.

“Do you go to the nurse a lot?” Ronan asked. When Adam looked at him, he was chewing on some wristbands he was wearing, which Adam hadn’t noticed before.

“No,” he said, which was kind of true. He didn’t go to the nurse— the nurse kept coming looking for him.

“Does he know about—?” Blue trailed off. Adam very pointedly _didn’t_ nod to make her see he’d understood where she was going.

“Maggot,” Ronan said, and it sounded like a warning.

“What? It’s just— How can _nobody_ do anything? They had to know, right?”

Adam started wringing his fingers.

“Can you leave? I want to sleep,” he said.

She opened her mouth to keep arguing, but Ronan guided her out of the room, very much like he’d guided Adam in before. It made Adam feel dirty and small and he made himself control his breathing.

“Are you in pain right now?” Ronan asked, startling Adam.

“No, I’m— I’m fine,” he said, because he was. He told himself he was, even after Ronan had left with Blue, even though he hadn’t closed the door all the way and even though he didn’t want to get up from bed to lock it.

He wiped his newly wet cheeks and looked around for something he could use to blow his still snotty nose, but didn’t find anything. He sighed and made himself move and tried to keep his torso from shaking much.

Ronan caught him while he was midway to the door.

“What the hell—”

Adam flinched.

He wasn’t supposed to move from bed, he knew that. He wasn’t supposed to cause so much trouble. Ronan was going to be very angry because he’d gone through all that trouble to make him feel comfortable and Adam had lasted only two seconds before disobeying him.

“Sorry, I—”

“Why are you _up_?” Ronan’s voice sounded tense. He probably didn’t want to be here, in the middle of the night, tending to Adam. All he knew, it could be something like two in the morning. He’d probably left the door open on purpose, as a reminder for Adam to _stay put_.

He took a step back. He bit down a whimper when a sudden sob made all his ribs dance.

One would’ve thought he’d had enough crying for the day.

“Shit. Sorry. Hey. It’s alright. I’m not mad. I’m just worried, okay? I don’t— I don’t want to tie you down to the bed or anything like that. It’s just— you’ll be more comfortable if you stay still until you heal. That’s all. I’m sorry. I keep fucking up.”

“You’re not,” Adam cried in between another two sobs. That wasn’t good, he knew, but couldn’t help it. He was the one messing everything up. He was the one making stupid mistakes, when for once in his life someone cared enough to put up with him dirtying their floors. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He sounded pathetic, and couldn’t stop crying now, and was making everything ache again.

Ronan left the glass of water he’d been carrying on the bedside table, next to the mug.

He kneeled in front of Adam.

“Can I hug you?” he asked, which didn’t make any sense at all.

“Why would you wanna do that?”

“You look miserable. I feel miserable. It might make it better, I think.”

Adam could see there was some kind of logic hidden in there, but he was too busy crying himself out to follow it.

“Kay. But you can’t squeeze,” he wailed.

And then Ronan hugged him, careful and kind and wonderful. And it didn’t feel funny or weird but grounded, because his hold wasn’t hard but was strong enough to keep his ribs from bouncing. Adam hadn’t said anything about _him_ not squeezing Ronan, so he buckled down to hug him with as much strength as he had, hiding his snotty face on Ronan’s neck.

“Was looking for a tissue,” he managed, after a while, when his sobs finally relented.

“I’ll bring you some.” Ronan lifted him from the ground and put him back on the bed. Adam didn’t want him to leave the hug, but he didn’t fight it when Ronan finally loosened Adam’s hold. “Take this,” he said, giving Adam the glass. He stopped him from drinking it, though, to take a pill out of a pocket in his pants. “It’s a painkiller. So you’ll sleep soundly.” Adam nodded and took it, and then drank the water. It made his throat less raspy and he wondered how Ronan knew that was what he’d needed.

“Thanks.”

“And this,” Ronan added, taking a phone from the same place the pill had come “is my boyfriend’s phone. Do whatever the fuck you want with it, but I want you to call me if you need anything.”

Adam took the phone with reverence. He tapped the screen and it lit up, revealing a picture of someone’s arm on a leather jacket. The wristbands told him whose arm it was.

“Won’t he mind?”

“Uh? No, 'course not. The fuck. So, you call me, okay? I mean, you obviously can get out of bed, but I’d really like it if you called and let me know whatever you want. You need to rest. Okay?”

Ronan was looking very directly at him, trying to tell him something with his big eyes, but Adam was too tired to get what that was. He nodded.

“I will,” he promised.

“I’m _R_.”

“That’s cute.”

“Shut up.”

“Don’t couples call each other things like _babe_ and _honey_ and stuff like that?”

“You’re really lucky your ribs are all fucked up or you’d be tickled to death right now.”

Adam smiled.

“I _am_ really lucky,” he repeated.

Ronan smiled too. It felt like Adam had done something right.

“Okay. Tissues. Got it. Anything else?”

“Nope.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was quite hard to write and didn’t turn up at all like I’d imagined. It’s also a bit harsher than the general tone of the fic. Adam’s physical abuse and its consequences won’t probably feature as prominently as shown here in future chapters, though I can’t say the same regarding his neglect or psychological abuse. This is really nothing worse than what is on-page on the actual books, but I think it’s a bit different when seen from the point of view of a child.


	5. Chapter 5

The curtains on Matthew’s bedroom were closed, so when Adam woke up he had no way of knowing how late it was. He turned around and enjoyed the general fluffiness of the situation he’d found himself in, and smiled to himself when he realized his stomach didn’t feel heavy anymore and his ribs were keeping mostly quiet.

He sighed and stretched and got rid of the blankets because the air in the room wasn’t freezing, like it was around Thanksgiving back at the trailer.

Something lit up the room, and it took Adam a moment to figure it was Ronan’s boyfriend’s phone, which kept getting texts nobody was answering. Adam had never used a mobile phone and didn’t really know what to do after discovering there was no password, but he remembered his promise and tried exploring the icon that looked like a normal phone.

He didn’t open anything else, just in case Ronan’s boyfriend didn’t like him snooping around his private stuff.

He found a contact named _R_. He giggled a bit and cleared his throat before calling.

He felt really happy leaning back on the pillows and closing his eyes, letting the phone ring on his ear.

“Adam?”

“Hi!”

“Everything alright?”

Adam hummed.

“Just woke up.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Okay, I guess. Look, are you hungry?”

“Not really. I don’t know if I should eat.”

“Yeah, you should definitely eat something. Just go downstairs, someone must be in the kitchen. Blue said she was gonna cook something green for lunch, but there should be still something left from breakfast.”

“Did you already have breakfast?”

Ronan laughed, and it made Adam less disappointed because apparently he’d missed breakfast with everyone else.

“Yeah, something like six hours ago. Look, I’m kinda in the middle of something with the cows here, but I’ll be back at the house for lunch, okay? Just ask whoever if you need anything.”

“Is Declan home?”

“Dunno. He was taking Matthew to Henrietta to visit someone, he said. They’ll be back later, though.”

“Okay.”

“Adam?”

“Hm?”

“Thanks for calling.”

“Uh. Yeah. Um— Ronan?”

Ronan grunted. He sounded far away, like he’d put Adam on speaker.

“Why didn’t your boyfriend take his phone with him?”

“Oh, that. Yeah, he was in a hurry when he left. I still have his shit around in my room. He’ll come soon to get it, or I’ll bring it up to him. Don’t worry about it. See ya later.”

Ronan hung up. Adam locked the screen and cleaned it with his shirt.

He got out of bed and put the phone on the bedside table, and took the hoodie he’d been wearing last night and wore it over his shirt.

He went downstairs, rubbing his eyes because outside the room it was _really_ bright, and found Blue in the kitchen.

“Good morning! How are you feeling today?” She was wearing a weird jumper with safety pins all over the neckline. She was boiling something that smelt quite similar to the tea her mom had given him, so he didn’t try approaching the stove.

“Hello. I’m good. Uh— Ronan said—”

Blue laughed, interrupting him. She opened the fridge and started rummaging inside.

“Someone’s got a big crush, uh? Ronan this and Ronan that— You’re gonna make Chainsaw jealous.”

“Chainsaw?”

“Oh, haven’t you met her? A huge, nasty bird that keeps following him around.”

Adam remembered a raven that had flown around them for a while when they’d been walking around the fields the day before, but nothing especially nasty.

He narrowed his eyes.

“Ronan said I could have whatever for breakfast, so I’m just going to have some milk,” he said.

“Well, there is oatmeal from before. It should be good for your little _problem_, because it’s very diuretic, you know? Here, I’ll pour you some. It’s just amazing with yogurt, and Henry usually puts some honey on it too, to make it sweeter.”

She didn’t leave the fridge— she actually started taking the yogurt and oatmeal out, but not the milk.

“I just want some milk, thank you.”

“Oh, are you sure? Well, I suppose it’d be a shame, for you to spoil your lunch. I’m making kimchi but like boiled— I’m trying a recipe one of Henry’s brothers gave us so it _will_ be good, trust me. You ever tried kimchi?”

Adam made his way towards the fridge. Blue got out of his way and focused on her boiling.

“No.”

“Well, it can be a bit shocking at first, but it _is_ quite good. Henry got me hooked!”

“Where’s Henry?” Adam knew where the glasses were. He filled one with milk and put the bottle back in the fridge.

“Ronan put him and Gansey on cleaning duty.”

Adam drank slowly. He didn’t feel thirsty or hungry, but he guessed some milk wouldn’t upset his stomach.

“Wanna help?”

Adam didn’t, but if everyone else was busy he didn’t have many alternatives. Besides, if he knew what was inside that thing it may be easier to eat it later.

“What can I do?”

He took one of the stools to the countertop, next to Blue. He got on it.

“Well, I just have to cut all the vegetables and add them to the mix. This one is way milder than original kimchi, so I’ve thought we should put like a lot of ginger to spice it up a bit.”

“I’ll cut the carrots, then,” Adam said, but when he was reaching for a knife she suddenly grabbed his arm.

Adam gasped, because it took him by surprise, but mainly because her grip kept pressing just _on_ one of his bruises.

“You can’t expect me to let you use a knife!”

Blue was fussing around him and in any other circumstances maybe Adam would’ve found it endearing. As it was, he just wanted her to release him. He wanted her to tell what she wanted him to do, instead of making him do stuff she was going to punish him later for doing.

“Let go!” he cried.

“Ah, sorry. Sorry! You just frightened me! What were you thinking, reaching for the knife like that?”

Adam’s mom would have been yelling just like that because he never got to the knife fast enough when she told him to help with the cooking. She always found things to yell at him in the kitchen, even when Adam tried to follow her vague instructions very carefully.

Adam didn’t know what to say to make Blue stop yelling, so he didn’t say anything.

“Are you even listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“Then don’t do that again.”

“I won’t.”

“Good. You can— Why don’t you add this? It’s already sliced, just put it gently inside and— Yeah. Like that. Very well, Adam.”

Adam clenched his teeth, but he mixed the onions with the boiled cabbages. It all looked awful. He had the feeling it would also taste awful.

“Now, I’ll add some salt. No, let me do that. I’ll know how much to add—we don’t want it to be too much, right?”

Adam passed her the salt. He then got down from the stool, took his empty glass and brought it to the sink.

“Adam? What are you doing?”

“You don’t need my help. I’ll find something else to do.”

“Oh, no, uh— No, you don’t need to leave. We can hang out and—”

Adam looked up, directly into Blue’s eyes.

“You can stop pretending to like me already, you’re a really _bad_ liar.”

“I _do_ like you! I’m just trying to help you.”

“I don’t need any help,” Adam sneered.

“How can you say that? You _need_ help, of course you do!” Blue crinkled her nose and Adam felt the sudden urge to leave the room. “We all saw, last night. Just because it’s healed for now doesn’t mean—”

“I didn’t want you to see. I didn’t give you permission to see. You stole that. So how about you shut up about things you have no idea—”

“Don’t speak to me like that!”

Adam stiffened. Then he remembered he wasn’t speaking to any of his parents. He remembered he didn’t really care if this girl liked him or not.

“Then don’t _you_ speak to me at all!” he snapped.

“Look, Adam, the _last_ thing I want is fighting with you—”

She was now blocking the way to the door. Adam could only try to make it to the back door, the one that led to the laundry.

He made sure not to betray his intentions— he didn’t look at the back door, neither did he get tense preparing to flee. He actually got back on the stool and took the salt from where Blue had left it, almost like he was about to get it back where it belonged.

Blue kept talking, about how it was really important to let things that bothered us out and be honest with our feelings. Not even the nurse she so very much loved was that annoying.

Adam unscrewed the salt shaker and let it all fall down on Blue’s cooking experiment.

He then jumped down the stool and darted towards the back door.

Blue was faster than she looked, because she managed to intercept him and grabbed him again by the arm, making him wriggle unsuccessfully while she dragged him back into the kitchen to turn off the stove.

That was the exact moment Ronan chose to come into the kitchen. He wasn’t alone—two other boys around his age came with him. Adam wondered briefly if one of them was Ronan’s boyfriend, but he soon realized they were the famous Gansey and Henry who had come with Blue.

“The fuck is going on?” Ronan asked.

Blue released Adam’s arm, and he took it to his chest. He was breathing heavily, but his ribs only hurt a little bit.

“For starters, you shouldn’t swear in front of a child!” she screamed.

“Jane?” said one of the new boys.

“He’s picking this attitude from you, and you’re all enabling it. You don’t get children get away with this kind of stuff, everybody knows that!”

“Did something happen?” the other boy asked.

“You tell them, go on!” Blue said, motioning towards Adam.

Adam clutched his arm and looked at the floor. Only then did he realize the situation he’d brought over himself. These people were Blue’s friends. Blue had been cooking for everyone, and he’d messed everyone’s lunch. They barely knew him— they’d pick Blue’s side.

He didn’t try to defend himself.

He just stood there, making himself small so that the trembling on his arm would also get small.

“What happened?” Ronan asked, and when Adam dared to raise his eyes he was looking pointedly at him.

He swallowed. The milk he’d taken was threatening to come back from his stomach, but as he didn’t wish to repeat what had happened the day before he forced it to stay down.

“Nothing,” Adam lied.

“He’s ruined our lunch, _that’s_ what happened. You shouldn’t get to eat any lunch at all, now.” Blue crossed her arms on her chest.

Adam didn’t want to see Ronan’s disappointment in his eyes, so he looked away.

“I wanna go home,” he whispered. Blue snorted.

“Now he just wants to get your attention,” she said. Adam clenched his teeth, because she was kind of right. But she was kind of wrong, too, because he didn’t want to be in this house anymore, if he couldn’t spend time with Matthew and Declan and Ronan and had to cook with Blue instead. He didn’t want to have to _watch_ them have fun together because they were friends. He was just a kid. They were all older. _Of course_ they wouldn’t have time to be with him.

That was okay, he told himself. He just didn’t want to be there for that.

“No, you don’t,” Ronan said.

“Adam—” One of the other boys, the one who had spoken first, took a step towards him. Adam took a step back.

“If you don’t let me leave, I’ll call the police and tell them you’ve kidnapped me.”

“If you call the police, you can tell them all about your bruises!” Blue cried. “Don’t you get it? You are so lucky, to have the chance to live it all again and— For goodness sake. We came all the way from Vancouver for you, you know?”

“Jane, that’s hardly—”

Adam nodded. He understood what she was saying— it was just like his mom would say. You are ungrateful, because you don’t appreciate what we do for you. You deserve what you get, because you don’t try hard enough to do as you’re told.

You were told to help in the kitchen, you ruined our lunch. Now you get scolded so you’ll feel guilty and when dad comes home I’ll tell him exactly what you did.

“I wanna go home,” Adam repeated. If it was going to be like that, he might as well go back to the trailer.

“How can you _say_ that?” Blue didn’t seem to be finished yet. Adam’s mom usually took a long time to be finished, too. “We’d never hurt you here, not like you get hurt there. And you still, you _still_ say—”

“You just grabbed me!”

Adam bit his lip. He shouldn’t have said that. Nothing good ever came from him saying stuff like that.

Blue didn’t answer this time, though. There was a very uncomfortable silence.

“Okay,” Ronan finally said. “Why don’t you go to your room, Adam?”

Adam looked at him. He’d expected him to say he’d go start the car to take him home. Why wasn’t Ronan kicking him out? And what was that? _His_ room? It was Matthew’s, not his.

Adam went upstairs, but didn’t lock the door. He felt he didn’t deserve it, not after making everybody mad and upset. He told himself they just probably needed some time to figure what to do about lunch, before coming here to yell at him.

He pinched his arms and tried not to cry. It hurt.

He made the bed and sat on the rug, with his back lying on the orange comforter. He cried anyway.

Ronan came up after a while. He hadn’t opened the curtains, but Ronan did when he entered after knocking.

“Didn’t you lock?” he asked.

Adam shook his head, trying to contain a sob.

“Figured you wouldn’t want me to.”

Ronan grunted and sat next to Adam, very close but without touching him. Adam didn’t know if he’d prefer to be touched or to be left alone. He didn’t move until he heard Ronan speak again.

“Do you feel safe here, Adam?” he asked, softly.

Ronan kept asking the wrong questions.

“Why don’t you want me to leave?”

“I don’t wanna see you get hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“I think you’re not.”

“But you don’t get to decide that! You’re just—” Adam left his head fall on his knees. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t want to be friends with Blue.”

He looked sideways to Ronan, who still hadn’t yelled at him for ruining Blue’s lunch.

“Why’s that? You seemed to like her at first?”

“Yeah, but— She—”

Adam didn’t know how to begin explaining.

“What the fuck happened earlier?”

“Didn’t she tell you?”

“Yep.”

“Then?”

“I’d like to hear it from you, you dumbass.”

Adam hid his face back on his knees and closed his eyes, still puffy from crying.

“Well, it’s true. I dropped all the salt into that thing she was cooking. But she started it!”

“What did she do?”

“She just kept me telling what to do and trying to be my friend, like she thought she knew how I was feeling or something, and then she didn’t let me use the knife because it was dangerous or whatever, but I _can_ use a knife! And then I said I didn’t want to help anymore, because she wasn’t letting me help, but she got mad because she wanted me to tell her about— you know. _Yesterday_.” Adam swallowed and breathed and hugged his knees and kept going. “And I don’t want to talk about _that_, and I’ve just met her so I don’t want to talk to her at all!”

“Hm. It’s not so bad, then.”

“It isn’t?”

“Well, when I first met her, I was jealous of her, because she was friends with my best friend _and_ she was dating my boyfriend.”

“She was dating your boyfriend?” Adam gaped.

Ronan chuckled.

“He wasn’t my boyfriend at the time.”

“Oh. And now you’re friends with her?”

“Yeah. Very good friends.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, they all went to get some pizza, so we won’t all starve.”

Adam let his body relax. His knees fell to the floor. He was really glad everyone else got to have lunch.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“I’m not mad you got Blue’s shit all salty,” Ronan said, “but I do think it’d be nice if you helped me clean the kitchen while they’re away.”

Adam nodded and self-consciously stood up. He shakily smiled at Ronan when he gave him a tissue from the bedside table.

Downstairs, there wasn’t really a lot to clean— they put the vegetables that hadn’t been in the pot inside the fridge and threw away the weird substance that had Blue had been cooking and wiped the counters until they got all shiny.

“Now, time to do the same with you,” Ronan said, wringing out a wet cloth in the sink.

“Uh?”

“You smell.”

“Do not!”

He did.

Adam blushed when Ronan took his arm gently and started sniffling at him like he was some kind of monkey. Ronan was pretending to find Adam disgusting and it made him giggle because he _knew_ it wasn’t true. He found it both childish and totally stupid, but Ronan didn’t seem to care, so he didn’t either.

He followed him to the bathroom and listened when Ronan explained where everything was.

“I’ll be in my bedroom. Come find me when you finish and I’ll help you with the bruise cream, ‘kay?” he said, and lightly hugged Adam, and Adam’s smile got lost in Ronan’s shirt.

The hot water from the bath stung a little but helped him relax and it was just the most wonderful thing he’d ever done. He could have fallen asleep in there.

When he’d finished rubbing himself, he got dried quickly and put on some clothes. He heard the others come back while Ronan was softly spreading the bruise cream on his back, but when he tensed Ronan didn’t say anything and kept telling him about Chainsaw, who was indeed his pet raven but wasn’t nasty at all.

He didn’t talk to Blue at all while they were eating. The pizza was good, but he didn’t want to make himself sick again, so he only ate one slice, very slowly. Everyone around him was chatting and laughing, but nobody asked him to join so he kept chewing and forcing himself not to cry.

He didn’t even know why he felt like crying so much. It was stupid. He was being stupid.

When he looked down again, he realized someone had cleared his plate, as well as the whole table. He didn’t remember anyone doing that.

“You up for it, Adam?” Henry, one of Ronan’s friends, was asking him something, and he looked like he had been talking to him for a while. Adam didn’t know what that was about.

“Uh?”

He was saved because just then Declan and Matthew came back. Matthew’s curly hair was hidden by a woolen hat when he entered the dining room.

“Hey, y’all’ve eaten already?”

Adam didn’t know what to say to Henry and felt so, _so_ relieved to see Matthew again that he almost hit himself with the table when he darted towards Matthew. He hugged him with all the strength he had.

“Adam! Hello! Dec said you were sick last night. Are you better now?”

Adam nodded. He looked at Declan, who had just come next to his youngest brother _after_ removing his coat and scarf.

Declan looked at Adam. He didn’t ask.

Adam took a step towards him.

“Can I hug you?” he asked.

Declan seemed surprised.

“Why?”

“Ronan said—” Adam shut himself up because he didn’t want to be accused again of having a crush on Ronan. But Declan didn’t say anything like that—he didn’t say anything at all. He just opened his arms and let Adam hug him. It was really nice. “Hugs make it better, right?”

Declan hummed.

“Did something happen?” he asked.

Adam shook his head.

He later figured Henry had been inviting him to go tree climbing with him and Opal. He accepted. It was really fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [more ](https://hklnvgl.tumblr.com/tagged/deaged!adam)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven’t read the sampler yet and don’t plan on doing so before the actual release of Call Down The Hawk, so please, please no spoilers. I have already figured some of them against my will and I am aware I’ve invented these few characters to be Adam’s friends. They aren’t the focus of this fics and they’re just there to show Adam’s life is getting better every moment and he is fitting and finding new friends at college. So yeah. Enjoy.

Blue came to get Henry as if Henry was his child to take home. Adam was busy chasing bugs with Opal so he didn’t mind her much.

“Adam, can we talk?” Blue said then. He didn’t want to, but he knew he’d been petty when he put that salt on her cooking, so he nodded. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that,” she said, which Adam wasn’t expecting at all. “It was very wrong of me. I’m sorry.”

Adam swallowed. She _was_ waiting, and that had been nice, so he supposed he could also apologize.

“I’m sorry for ruining your stew.”

She smiled, because _of course_ she’d been expecting that. She told him to come inside to say goodbye properly. Adam was about to tell her no, but then Opal betrayed him and ran towards the house, yelling that Gansey couldn’t leave without kissing her first. Adam hadn’t thought Opal was the kind of girl who liked kisses, but the world was full of surprises lately.

“I know you don’t like me very much right now,” Blue said, as she opened the back door of the house. Adam didn’t deny it. Blue chuckled. “I feel like I’m having a _déjà vu _here.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when you feel like you’ve already lived a moment. Like you say something and suddenly you feel you’ve already said that and the situation feels familiar. Y’know?” Adam narrowed her eyes and followed her scarf as she wrapped it around her neck. In the kitchen, Matthew was showering Henry with plastic containers full of food.

“And why’s that?” Adam asked, seeing as Blue didn’t keep talking.

“I feel I’ve treated you the same way I treated my first boyfriend. I used to blame him for things that weren’t his fault. I told him pretty nasty stuff and I actually never apologized for it.”

“Are you dating both Henry and Gansey?” Adam asked, remembering something Ronan had said.

“Aren’t you a bit young to talk about these things?” She was deflecting, which was something Adam had learned not to do when talking to the school nurse because then he’d tell him that’s what he was doing and would try to make him stop. But Adam took her answer and the flush on her cheeks as confirmation and filed that information to tell Ronan later.

He shrugged.

“You started it,” he said.

“I did not!” But Adam looked at her, because she had, and felt proud when she ducked her head. “Ugh, you’re right. I did.”

She still wasn’t answering. If Adam had cared enough he could have asked Henry. He didn’t, so he changed the subject.

“Is your first boyfriend Ronan’s current boyfriend?”

Blue’s eyes got _really_ wide.

“What?” She started fidgeting with the ends of her scarf.

“Are we almost ready to leave?” Gansey asked, already holding the front door open, with Opal hanging from his waist.

“So he is,” Adam nodded, because she hadn’t denied it.

“Uh— Gansey’s waiting, so we probably should get going now—”

Blue looked frightened, and Adam wondered why would that be. She wasn’t afraid of Ronan, who in Adam’s opinion was the most scarily-looking person in the house, with his shaved head and his tattoo —Adam was sure his dad would label him as a hooligan and throw a can of beer at him if he saw him on TV. Blue wasn’t afraid of Opal’s shrieks or Declan’s stares and she didn’t seem to be affected by the smell of her mom’s tea. So Adam wondered why his mentioning of Ronan’s boyfriend would make her look like that.

The guy seemed okay. He had to be, if Ronan was dating him. He was definitely smart, if he was going to Harvard. He had to be cool, if Matthew and Declan liked him as much as they seemed to. He was probably a bit stupid if he’d dated Blue in the past but Adam was willing to let that pass because he knew everyone made mistakes and he also didn’t want this guy to be perfect.

And then he had left, without his phone.

Ronan probably missed him.

Adam wondered if Ronan would miss him, when he left to go back to the trailer. They hadn’t talked about that, but the long weekend was just so long, and he had to go to school on Monday. The nurse had threatened to call home if he missed any more classes this month. His parents didn’t like phone calls from school, so he _was_ going to school on Monday.

The Barns and these holidays were like a dream and Adam didn’t want to wake up. But he couldn’t stay asleep forever. This wasn’t the real life.

He was aware Blue was calling for Ronan, but he didn’t have the energy to try and focus on what she was saying. Something about _damage control._ Perhaps she was insulting him again —once a teacher had said something like that when he’d thought Adam wasn’t listening. _Such a pity he’s damaged_, he’d said, as he corrected Adam’s worksheet. Adam had looked that word up on the library dictionary. He hadn’t liked what he’d found.

He forced himself to listen when Ronan crouched in front of him. His ears were all red from the cold outside.

“You alright?”

“I think he’s jealous of _your boyfriend_,” Blue said, before Adam could answer.

“The fuck, Sargent, that’s not fucking funny—”

“I’m not!” Adam yelled. “I’m not jealous and I don’t even know this boyfriend person and why won’t you _stop_ assuming you know stuff about my life?”

He could’ve kept going, but he shut up. He eyed Ronan, to see if he needed to find a quiet corner where he could cry alone. He didn’t even know why he felt like crying. He didn’t like crying. Why did he keep crying since coming to the Barns?

“Perhaps we should take our leave.” Gansey was still holding the door. Opal looked sad when Adam locked eyes with her.

“Perhaps _Sargent_ could fix this,” Ronan said. He didn’t sound mad. In fact, he sounded way too calm. Like he was _trying_ not to sound mad. Adam looked at him, trying to figure out what didn’t feel right about that.

“I—,” Blue spoke. Adam lazily looked at her. He understood then she was the _Sargent_ they kept talking about. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”

Adam didn’t know if he believed her. He didn’t really care enough to try, so he just looked away and refused to acknowledge anyone until they were all outside, saying their goodbyes.

He breathed when Opal came and held her hand as if to make him shake it.

He hesitantly took it, and she squeezed. It made Adam feel better.

It grounded him when Blue unexpectedly came back and stood in front of Opal and him.

“I’m gonna leave now,” she said, “but I wanted you to know that I’m really glad I got to meet you, Adam. And you probably know that already, but Ronan’s _elated_ to have you here. You have nothing to be jealous of, and that’s the truth.”

Opal pressed herself against Adam’s arm, and he was surprised to find himself comfortable with her touch.

“Adam is Adam always,” she said, and it sounded like a growl and a song at the same time.

Blue nodded, like she understood.

“Of course.”

A car honked and Ronan came to lurk at the door. Blue punched his arm when she passed next to him. Opal left running the moment the engine got started.

“It’s getting dark,” Ronan said.

Opal shrieked and ignored him, and Ronan closed the door.

“D’you miss your boyfriend?” Adam asked.

Ronan nodded.

“He goes to Harvard, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How far is Harvard from here?”

“By car? Nine or ten hours.”

“That’s far away.”

Ronan nodded again.

Adam still felt a bit like crying, but he didn’t let the tears drop.

“So if you can still be his boyfriend when you’re _so_ far away, d’you think— like— we can still be— _friends_ when I’m not here anymore?” he asked the floor.

He heard Ronan’s change in breathing. He looked up.

Ronan seemed to be fighting tears of his own, so Adam felt doubly proud for the two of them.

“You can stay here fucking forever, if that’s what you want.”

Adam gasped, because that’s not exactly what he wanted, but it was very nice anyway.

“Well, I—”

“But I’m not forgetting you. Ever.”

Adam swiped at his eyes. He didn’t fix much, so he went to hide his wet face into Ronan’s belly. Ronan let him get away with that, so he hugged him until Matthew called for them to join him to play video games.

Ronan said he had something to do, but told Adam he could go play.

“Your brother is awesome,” he told Matthew as he was given a controller.

“I _know_, right?”

Matthew was really good at racing games, so he won all their rounds, until Declan came and asked to join and beat them both before leaving to talk to Ashley on the phone. Then someone else called Matthew on _his_ phone and he left giggling excitedly, and Adam asked himself if he also had a partner or if that was just how he greeted everyone. He turned the TV off because playing by himself didn’t seem very appealing, and decided to take a trip to the bathroom before wandering to look for Ronan.

He didn’t have to look very hard, because when he came back to the living room he found Ronan draped on a quilt, squinting at a phone and looking miserable all over.

“You also got a call?” Adam asked.

“Uh? What you talking about?”

“Do you know if Matthew is dating someone?”

“No idea. Why? Do you think he is? If we tell Declan he might have an aneurysm.”

“Don’t tell him then. But Blue is _definitely_ dating Gansey and Henry.”

“Are we gossiping right now?”

Adam laughed and came to stand next to the sofa. Ronan moved to let him sit next to him, and promptly threw another quilt on him, even though the fire was lit and this house was always pleasantly warm.

“Dunno. What are you doing?”

Ronan’s attention went back to the phone. It was his boyfriend’s, Adam realized.

“So my boyfriend’s friends are freaking out.”

“Because he had to leave suddenly? Didn’t he tell them he was leaving? Didn’t he tell _you_?”

“I know where he is. But they don’t, and I guess— they’re worried.”

Ronan was holding the phone between just two fingers, as if it was poisonous.

“Is he okay?”

“Uh? Yeah, yeah. He’s with family?”

“Like Ashley?”

“Who the fuck is Ashley.” Ronan seemed serious. Adam deadpanned. “_Declan’s_ Ashley? Sure. Her family must be a crowd of stuck up pigs, if they’re anything like her.”

“Is your brother dating a pig?”

“No. Why would you say that. Ashley is—like—a girl. Well, she’s older than me, I think.”

“She pretty?”

“Dunno. I suppose.”

“Then don’t call her a pig. That’s rude.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, you smartass” Ronan playfully touched Adam’s nose. “Anyway. What should I do about _this_.” He let the phone drop on the quilt when it suddenly rang.

The screen said _Carol Reeds_.

“Someone’s calling,” Adam pointed out, because Ronan didn’t make any move to pick up.

“She keeps doing that. She’s his roommate.”

“Can’t you take the call and tell her he’s okay?”

“What? Are you crazy?” Ronan looked so _truly_ horrified that Adam laughed.

“You picked a call from me this morning,” he remembered.

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s _you_! I don’t even know this Carol!”

Adam thought for a moment.

“Can’t you text her?”

“It’s not just her. But. I dunno, man. Like. Okay, listen. If this was your phone, would you want me to answer?”

“I don’t have a phone.” The call ended. Before the screen went black again, Adam saw the notifications the phone had in the morning had maybe doubled.

“Well, yeah, but imagine you had one. And you went on a trip or something and left it behind by mistake. Imagine your friends were calling. Would you want me to answer to tell them you’re alright?”

Adam kept thinking about how nobody would worry enough if he had to leave suddenly except maybe the school nurse and he made a snap decision to tell Ronan about that because suddenly he realized Ronan would listen.

“Can I tell you something I haven’t told anyone?” he whispered.

“Sure.” Ronan seemed very happy to have found an excuse to leave his boyfriend’s phone forgotten on the table. “Shoot.”

“So you remember the nurse Blue was talking about? Mr. Collins?”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

Adam didn’t, most days.

“He’s— He keeps— He keeps asking questions. Questions about— that, you know?” Ronan nodded. Adam nodded too, to give himself strength to continue. “So I think he knows, but wants me to say something. But I can’t do that, because—”

“Your dad would get mad?” Ronan said, very softly.

Adam shivered, even though he was still under the quilt.

“Very, I think. But I don’t know what to do about Mr. Collins. And sometimes— Sometimes I want to tell him everything. But I _know_ I can’t, mom told me that. It’s just— What you said. If I went away, I think the nurse is the only one who would try to call. But he would call home and that’s really bad, so I guess it doesn’t count.” Adam hiccupped, and only then he realized he was crying. _Again_. Somehow it felt even worse because he still didn’t know how to solve Ronan’s problem.

Ronan’s finger came very close to his face, blurry because of the tears. It hovered there for a while before touching him, and it felt _really_ nice to have someone else wipe his tears. He sobbed. His ribs didn’t hurt, which only made him sob more.

Ronan wasn’t mad even though Adam was making him waste his time.

“Come here,” he said, instead, and opened his arms. He somehow placed the quilts over them, so when Ronan hugged him Adam felt very warm and safe and thought that even if his parents hadn’t called yet looking for him probably Ronan would if Adam were to disappear.

“Would you?” he asked between sobs, and Ronan somehow understood.

“Yes. I’d call everyone I knew to look for you and I’d pester your friends until they picked up out of exasperation.”

“I don’t have any friends at school,” Adam quietly confessed.

“That’s because only dipshits go to that school of yours. They’re just fucking stupid if they don’t want to be friends with you.”

“Blue went to my school.”

“I never said Blue wasn’t a dipshit.”

“I think your boyfriend would want his friends not to worry. So that—like they don’t come looking for him or anything.”

“Hm. I guess you’re right. Shit.” Adam expected Ronan to shove him away to pick the phone, but Ronan had long arms and he managed without making Adam leave. He made himself comfortable. “Wanna help?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Let’s do this. Shit. So many messages. How does he even know seven different people to have conversations with?” Adam giggled. It felt funny to hear Ronan’s voice muffled because his ear was just above Ronan’s heart. “’Kay. Not gonna answer Gansey nor Blue. Fuck. There’s one from his therapist. I think they postponed their appointment because of the holidays. Fuck. _Happy Thanksgiving. I have a free spot next Tuesday at 7, tell me if it works.” _Ronan read without intonation, like he was a robot from a movie. “What do I say?”

“You should probably say Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Yeah but about the appointment. I don’t know if he’ll be able to make it.”

“Just say that. _Happy Thanksgiving. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it. Sorry._”

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Ronan added, and started typing. Adam didn’t think he’d take his suggestion seriously. “Right. Next one. Some guy named Mark. Ugh. I think he has the hots for him. What the hell. _I’m so glad to have you in my life._ Who says that. I’m not answering this one.”

Adam wiggled his way up until he could see the screen Ronan was showing him. Mark’s last message was about some email, Adam guessed from a teacher. Or were they called _professors_ at college? Was that a thing?

“He talked to him about going out earlier, see? To get drinks. So he doesn’t want to talk to him just to get help with homework and stuff. That’s good.”

“Uh? Do you think he’s taking advantage of him or something?”

“No. That’s what I said.”

“Okay. Well. This one we leave for later. Let’s go with this Carol chick before she fries his phone or something.”

“You don’t like her?”

“Never met her. _Shit_. I shouldn’t be reading this. If I answer like myself I’ll just look like the creepy boyfriend who controls their partner’s phone,” he whined.

Adam chuckled at how badly Ronan seemed to be handling this.

“What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

Ronan huffed.

“I just call him Dipshit. Magician, too, but mostly Dipshit. Yep.”

Adam rolled his eyes.

“De-flec-ting.”

“Adam.”

“Hm?”

“It’s Adam.”

Adam blinked.

“Oh. _Really_?” There was something else going on in there, Adam knew, but that something kept getting out of his grasp.

“Yeah. But I never call him that.”

“Well, I don’t like it when people call me by things other than my name.” He thought for a moment about how his dad called him _boy_ from time to time and it made him shiver. Ronan noticed and put the quilt up until it reached Adam’s chin.

“You don’t?” Ronan seemed surprised.

Adam shrugged, letting the quilt fall down again. He reached for the phone.

“Let me?”

Ronan gave him the phone.

Carol was a blond girl whose first unanswered messages were full of smileys but that had somehow convinced herself she needed to call the police if Ronan’s boyfriend hadn’t answered by Monday.

Adam started typing steadily. His fingers didn’t seem to want to get to the keys, but he slowly made his way through the sentences.

“Is this Greengrocers’?” he asked Ronan, pointing at a word.

“What?”

“You know, when you put an apostrophe on a plural. That’s what Mrs. Andrews says they’re called— Greengrocers’.”

Ronan grunted.

“You’re such a nerd.”

Ronan wasn’t being helpful, so Adam ignored him until he was satisfied with his text.

“Listen up. _Hey, I’m friends with Adam’s boyfriend and I’m staying at his boyfriend’s farm_. Oh, it’s not Greengrocers’. Okay. _It’s really nice here and I’m sure Adam loves it as much as I do. _Here I meant your Adam. _He’s not here right now though and he left his phone behind so that’s why he’s not answering you. It was nice to meet you._”

Adam looked up to see what Ronan thought, which was a bit tricky because of the position they were still in. Ronan kept quiet for a moment.

“It’s fucking perfect. Send it,” he said, in the end.

Adam did.

Carol called a minute later. Adam picked up.

“Hello?”

“Wow. It’s true? You have Adam’s phone?”

It was a bit weird to talk about this other person who was also called Adam. He’d met one other Adam before, one of this mom’s cousins or something, but he was old and they never saw him and Adam only remembered because they shared a name.

“Hm. Yeah. Well, it’s here, but I don’t _have_ it. I used his hoodie though, but Ronan says he doesn’t mind.”

“Uh. Hi, I guess. So— where is he?”

Adam blinked.

“Uh— Ronan said he’s with family. He must be celebrating Thanksgiving.”

“Right.” She had a nice voice. “Can you pass me with Ronan, kid?”

Adam looked at Ronan, who was listening in. Ronan flinched away from the phone.

“Uh— he’s doing some work outside, but he told me to tell you that you don’t need to worry.”

There was a pause. Adam could still feel Ronan’s heartbeat.

“Kid, are you sure? I mean, Ronan sounds like a good guy from what Adam tells, but— Why’s he staying with family anyway? He doesn’t talk to his parents.”

“Not his parents,” Ronan muttered in Adam’s ear, the one not busy with the phone.

“Uh— I think he’s not staying with his parents. Um. He’ll be back soon? But— he can’t call you because he doesn’t have his phone. So. Nice meeting you. Bye.” He hung up.

He breathed. That had been weird.

“She didn’t believe me.”

“She can go fuck herself.” Ronan took the phone away from Adam’s hands. “You hungry?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re curious about the actual messages from Adam’s OC friends, [ check this out.](https://hklnvgl.tumblr.com/post/188216671920/from-adams-phone)
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are highly appreciated.


	7. Chapter 7

Both Ronan and Declan eyed him carefully while they all had dinner. Adam felt oddly reassured for being paid attention and tried to control the reddening of his ears while he ate. Then Matthew begged Ronan to help him study and Adam was going to tag along but Declan asked him what he wanted to do and Adam spent a full minute looking him in the eye.

“We might have some games around somewhere. I know Matthew played maybe once with that science set mom bought him— Let me have a look.” He probably meant for Adam to stay put while he went rummaging and looking for treasures, but Adam found the concept of having a whole room full of stuff you didn’t use but didn’t get rid of either really exciting.

They found Matthew’s old and almost intact science set, which Adam eyed with starry eyes until Declan promised him he could keep it and play with it and even use up all the props if he wanted, because those could be bought and Declan would gladly do so if Adam asked. But they also found some dusty fairy tale books that Declan said had been his dad’s, and two boxes full of Halloween costumes Declan said Matthew would be ecstatic to try on, and another box with tapes from their music competitions as children that Declan promised they could watch some other time. He also promised he would teach Adam how to play some musical instrument, to which Adam could only answer by hugging Declan tightly until he sneezed because the attic was great but not the cleanest room in the house and there was dust floating all around them.

“Wanna try that game?”

Adam nodded, because he very much wanted to see if he could make a volcano explode like the one on the picture outside the box. Declan led them both downstairs and told Adam to put himself to work in the kitchen table.

The volcano did work, and Declan didn’t tease him or laugh at him when Adam clapped proudly because of it, and even called his brothers so he could show them. Matthew wanted to try as well so they poured more vinegar into the plastic volcano and they both giggled when it worked.

“What are you, seven?” Ronan asked Matthew, but he was smiling, so Adam didn’t feel mocked.

“But this is so cool!” Matthew protested, while Adam read through the actual scientific explanation that was included in the game.

Ronan caught him rubbing his eyes to keep them open and pointedly didn’t say anything until Adam blushed and nodded.

“Gonna go to bed,” he said. Ronan gave him his boyfriend’s phone. Declan reminded him again to brush his teeth. Matthew kissed his cheek goodnight.

Adam slept soundly until morning.

He woke up a bit sore, but it was nothing he couldn’t bear so he didn’t say anything when he met everyone for breakfast. The oatmeal Blue had suggested the previous day was tasty and Opal was telling a story about a dream or a memory and before Adam realized he was saying hello to Henry who for some reason came in, wearing a jumper with shiny little pearls.

“Miss me?” Henry said, sitting on the stool next to Adam.

Adam was finishing his orange juice, but he rolled his eyes.

“You were here just yesterday,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“Why are you here?” he asked. It sounded rude and Adam hoped Henry didn’t take it as prove of Adam not liking him. Adam liked Henry quite a bit.

“I’m on driving duty!”

“Driving where?”

Henry tilted his head. Ronan grunted from across the table.

“Lynch, my man, I thought you were on _explaining_ duty.”

“Whatever.” Ronan gulped his coffee. “Adam.”

“Hello.”

“Look. Matthew, Declan and I are going to Henrietta for Mass.” Adam nodded. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go to Henrietta, and Cheng has offered to take you to a diner here in Singer’s Falls.”

“Okay.” Adam nodded again.

“With Gansey and Blue,” Ronan specified.

“Are you three dating?” Adam asked Henry.

Henry batted his eyelashes.

“Yes.”

Matthew cooed while Adam eyed Ronan.

“Told ya,” Adam smirked.

“Were you betting on us?”

“Cheng, focus. So. Adam. Wanna go to the diner?”

Adam blinked.

“You just said that’s where I’m going.”

“If you don’t wanna, I’ll stay here with you. Or we can go somewhere else. Whatever the fuck.”

Adam blinked again.

“But aren’t you going to Mass?”

Ronan didn’t say anything. Adam breathed. He didn’t exactly want to go hang out with Blue, but Henry wasn’t so bad. He hadn’t got a chance to meet Gansey properly yet.

“Okay,” he said. Ronan waited for a second before nodding.

“Make sure he eats, but not too much,” he said.

Adam wasn’t one bit hungry, because they’d just had breakfast, but Henry shook Ronan’s hand as if they’d just signed an international treaty.

Ronan insisted Adam have a bath and more bruise cream before they left. Adam didn’t let them leave before he’d hugged all three of them.

“Now, the real question here. Are you a Madonna fan?” Henry asked when Adam hadn’t had time yet to fasten his seatbelt. He made sure Adam became a Madonna fan by shoving a thousand of her songs into his ears. Adam didn’t mind because Henry’s car’s seats warmed themselves and were really comfortable.

The diner was cozy and full of plants. Adam pointed at one of them with the hand not being held by Henry and asked the waitress what its name was.

“Hm—I think that’s a fig.” The waitress led them to where Gansey and Blue were having breakfast, at a table by the end of the shop. “Fiddle something?”

“Fiddle leaf fig?” Gansey brightened when he saw them coming.

“That’s it!” The waitress smiled. “What can I bring you guys?”

“Want something?” Henry sat next to Blue. Adam shook his head while he folded himself on the space Gansey left for him.

“Do you like figs?” He asked.

Adam shrugged.

“They’re pretty.”

“Indeed they are! Would you let me gift you one for your room?”

Adam looked at a corner of the table.

“My mom doesn’t like growing plants.”

Gansey stood in silence for a full minute that Blue and Henry tried to fill talking about their next trip to somewhere in Florida.

Henry then asked Adam for his opinion on ferris wheels, which he didn’t have an opinion on, and somehow he saw himself inside the conversation. Blue was really polite and kind and she didn’t talk much, which Adam was grateful of, but the situation didn’t become uncomfortable because Henry and Gansey kept the talk going.

They had just ordered some sandwiches when Ronan, Matthew and Declan came back. Ronan sat next to Adam even though there wasn’t a lot of space, but Adam didn’t feel trapped because he somehow knew if he needed to leave Ronan wouldn’t mind Adam jumping over him. Adam even figured Ronan would help him jump.

“How was Mass?” he asked.

Ronan shrugged. Declan and Matthew had taken the booth next to theirs.

“How was lunch?” Ronan asked.

Adam shrugged.

“I’ll buy a fiddle leaf fig when I grow up and I’ll put it in my room with locks on the door,” he said. Ronan snorted.

Declan stood up and went outside to talk on the phone. They ate their sandwiches. Adam stopped at his third one because Ronan gently nudged him with his elbow. Gansey’s phone rang but he didn’t leave to take the call.

“It was Maura,” he said when he finally hung up. “She said, very suspiciously, mind, that the ley line seems stronger in Cambridge tonight.”

Ronan glared at him over Adam’s head.

Matthew approached their table.

“So,” he said, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Already leaving?” Blue asked, but she didn’t phrase it like a question.

“You are?” Adam asked.

“Yeah, Dec wants to get to DC early to beat traffic.”

“Oh.” Adam had always known this situation wasn’t going to last forever, but he was suddenly aware it was a Sunday and everyone’s lives should go back to how they were on Monday. He swallowed because he also needed to get back to school.

Adam felt Ronan’s arm tuck him in in a half hug. He was _so_ comforted he started crying and had to turn to hug him properly not to die of embarrassment. Not that he thought that was possible, he wasn’t stupid.

“Oh, dear.”

At Gansey’s words, Adam realized he was hugging the wrong brother, because Ronan wasn’t the one leaving for DC, so he wiped his nose with his hand and climbed over Ronan’s lap and went to hug Matthew.

“I’ll miss you,” he whispered. Matthew squished him a bit too strongly, but Adam didn’t complain. He hugged Declan next.

Declan crouched to be at his height when Adam let go.

“Hey. I’m going to tell you something you may not understand right now, but I’d like you to listen anyway, okay?”

“Okay,” Adam said, trying not to sniffle.

“Even when things change back, you can count on me. Whatever it is you need, I’ll be there. Do you understand?”

“You just said I wouldn’t.”

Declan smiled.

“Don’t let people tell you you can’t do things. Take care of Ronan for me, will you?”

Adam nodded, because that was the kind of thing people on TV said to children when they wanted them to feel useful. It didn’t really work, because Adam wasn’t feeling useful but sad, but he understood Declan’s intentions. He waved him and Matthew goodbye.

“We’re leaving, too. Need to pack,” Ronan said, stopping Adam from getting back to the booth. Adam looked up, but Ronan was looking at Gansey.

“Of course. Uh—Safe travels. And please call if there’s any change. Uh. It’s been a pleasure, Adam.”

He extended his fist towards Adam, who looked at it cluelessly.

“He wants you to bump it,” Henry whispered loudly, like Natalie Nicholson did sometimes when she wanted to ask Adam things in the middle of a test.

Adam bumped fists with Gansey, still not understanding what that was about. Gansey seemed very pleased, so he supposed he’d done it correctly.

Blue just smiled at him and told Ronan not to bully him. Adam could have said she was the only one who bullied people, but she’d been nicer today and he didn’t want to mess that up, so he stayed silent. Henry asked if he could get a hug too, and Adam gave him one, a bit shorter than Matthew’s and Declan’s had been.

Ronan took him on his car back to the Barns.

“So what are we packing?” he asked, when they got to the front door. Ronan opened with his key.

“Remember I told you my boyfriend has all his shit still on my bedroom? We’re taking it up to him.”

“Oh, to Harvard?”

“Yeah.” Ronan was already up the stairs. Adam followed.

“Will we be back tomorrow morning? I have to go to school.”

“If we can’t make it, I’ll call your school,” Ronan said. Adam kept quiet while he started throwing clothes inside a duffel bag because he needed a moment to let the fact that someone was willing to call his school to make excuses for him sink.

“Is your boyfriend already in Harvard? Carol will be happy.”

“He’ll be soon.”

“Will you wanna spend some time with him?” Adam asked, carefully. He didn’t want to think about it, but he supposed Ronan would want to be with _his_ Adam, since he hadn’t seen him all break.

“Don’t know yet.”

“Oh. Okay. Can I help?”

Ronan looked up from the Harvard hoodie, which had been carefully folded on the chair by the desk. Adam breathed in relief when he saw the stains had completely disappeared.

“Stop thinking that.”

“What?”

“I’m not leaving you to fuck around Cambridge on your own while I go hook up with my boyfriend, so take that stupid idea out of your mind.”

Adam swallowed a gasp, because Ronan had been terribly on point.

“That’s okay. You don’t have to babysit me or anything. I can entertain myself. I don’t even have to go if you’d prefer to stay there for longer—”

“I’m fucking telling you that’s not happening, so stop being difficult. Go take a shit or something while I finish here.” Ronan’s hand dismissed him, so Adam went to the bathroom.

He was washing his hands when he heard Ronan shout for Opal if she was coming, but apparently she was not because she came to give Adam some brown leaves as a parting gift.

Ronan produced a children’s seat and gave Adam a bottle of water before ushering him back inside his car.

It was indeed a long trip. They stopped sometimes to get snacks and go to the bathroom, and Ronan kept telling Adam to take naps. However, Adam thought Ronan must be getting bored of driving all by himself without anyone talking to him, so he only slept for half an hour when they passed Philadelphia and spent the rest of the trip telling Ronan random stuff he’d learnt at school and playing _I spy_. Ronan cheated because he said he spied things like yellow horses and green clouds, which were things they had _not_ seen through the car windows, but Adam just rolled his eyes and didn’t mind much.

It was dark and cold when they finally parked at a small hotel that didn’t look at all like what Adam thought a college dorm would look like. He rubbed his eyes while Ronan turned around to look at him from the driver’s seat.

“We’re sleeping here tonight.”

Adam nodded. Ronan took one of the two duffel bags that had been packed in the boot and Adam followed him when he went to the front desk to ask for a room. They rode the elevator when they got one.

“I’ll order something to eat. Any preferences?” Ronan had his phone out already. Adam shrugged. “Cool,” he said, and went to open the window while he typed something. He suddenly looked up. “You feeling alright there?”

“Sure.”

“Are you lying to me right now?”

Adam flushed, but he was just a bit sore because of the long trip on the car. He shook his head.

Ronan showered while they waited for their burgers to come, and he got out just in time to flash his credit card to the delivery girl who brought them. Ronan moved the desk so that it was next to one of the twin beds and they ate sitting on it.

Adam fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow, just changed into his pajamas and with the lights still on while Ronan fumbled with the TV remote.

He was very confused when he opened his eyes again. He was quite cold, and his head hurt when he tried turning around, and he didn’t recognize the dark room and his sleepy brain was telling him something was wrong but was very unhelpfully failing at nailing that down.

He rubbed his eyes but his mind took another two or three minutes to start thinking clearly again. In that time, he discovered he was cold because he wasn’t wearing the pajamas he was sure he’d gone to bed with, and the comforter was quite thin and the room wasn’t as well insulated as the Barns was.

He violently sat up when he remembered the Barns and the weekend and everything that had happened since Thanksgiving.

He was feeling his completely healed ribs with trembling fingers when he discovered Ronan laying still on the other bed, with his eyes open.

“_Fuck_. Ronan.” He’d meant it as a swear, not as a whine, but that’s what he got. He looked down at his hands and flexed his fingers before looking back at Ronan. His brain was trying to catch up, but wasn’t making much progress.

He breathed deeply and checked nothing hurt. He exhaled and did it again.

He smiled, because he was about to have a very uncomfortable conversation that involved his current state of nudity, but it didn’t really matter.

“Remind me not to get my ribs bruised ever again.”

Ronan didn’t say anything for a long time, and Adam feared he was indeed mad and started getting comebacks ready for when he snapped, before he snorted.

“At least one was fucking broken, Parrish, as if you don’t know the difference.”

Adam blinked. He breathed again.

Ronan hadn’t moved yet, but he sounded pissed. He hadn’t been pissed when they’d gone to bed, but back then Adam had been in his seven year old body and mind, so possibly Ronan had hidden it from him.

“Sorry for making you come all the way here,” he tried, keeping his vowels short and his temper on a leash. He’d just decided he didn’t want to fight after such a confusing and wonderful weekend.

“Shut the fuck up.”

But perhaps it had only been wonderful for him, Adam realized.

“Shit. Uh— Sorry for ruining our break,” he said, much softer than before.

“What?” Ronan’s head shot up.

Adam felt himself blush.

“Yeah, anyway. Why am I not wearing anything? Did I revert back to what I was _not_ wearing when I shrunk or something?”

“Don’t be stupid. You started thrashing and were practically choking on that tiny shirt before I removed it.”

Adam looked at Ronan, but didn’t have any memory of having thrashed or feeling choked. He looked down again, at his long legs under the covers, and imagined the constriction of getting up with the boxers Declan had bought him on.

He gasped.

“Uh— Thank you for that, too. I—”

He wanted to say everything he hadn’t known better when he was a child, but there was just _so_ _much_ he didn’t even know where to begin. He looked back at Ronan, who was sitting on his bed, as if waiting for Adam to do something.

He then remembered how excited Ronan had sounded on the phone just a week earlier, when they were planning for the break. He’d wanted to bring Adam to the new Cabeswater. He’d said he wanted to take him on a date and wake up next to him.

Adam’s throat felt closed.

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t plan on this to happen. I— I was really looking forward to spending these days with you, Ronan, I— I’ll make it up to you somehow, okay? I don’t know if I could get away to go to the Barns, but maybe we could—like— go somewhere near for the weekend or—”

He shut his mouth when Ronan came glooming to stand next to Adam’s bed.

“How fucking stupid are you?”

“Uh?”

“We _have_ spent your break together, dumbshit.” He climbed into Adam’s bed, which wasn’t very wide, but Adam made space for him nonetheless.

“Well, yes, but I know you weren’t expecting to spend _your_ break caring for a child.”

“And did _you_ expect to spend _your_ break recovering from having your fucking ribs broken?”

“I don’t think they were broken. If they had been it’d have hurt more, I think.” Adam crossed his arms in front of his chest, but it didn’t do anything to help him with the cold.

“More? How can it hurt _more_? You were fucking crawling in pain, Adam.”

“Uh. Sorry.” He flushed. Ronan’s stare didn’t let him space to hide, so he looked back.

“Stop that! Why do you keep apologizing?”

“Uh—”

Ronan shook his head and sighed. He lifted the comforter and came inside the covers with Adam, and made him wiggle down until they were both completely covered. Ronan rested his head on Adam’s shoulder and Adam felt distinctly better.

“I’d fucking love to spend another weekend with you,” Ronan whispered. He reached around Adam and half hugged him. He gave him a squeeze. “I’m glad I can do that now without hurting you.” He kissed his collarbone three times. “And this.” He kissed his neck. “But. It wasn’t—” He stopped the kissing. Adam put his cold hand on Ronan’s chest, to feel Ronan’s heart over his shirt. “It wasn’t like a task or a job. Taking care of you, I mean. Fuck, I’d do it more if you’d let me.”

“You didn’t even realize I’d need underwear,” Adam deadpanned.

“Shut up.”

“And you gave me so much food I had an indigestion.”

“Shut the fuck _up_,” Ronan said, before kissing Adam on the mouth. Ronan’s lips made him forget about everything else, because he felt safe and loved and happy.

“Ronan, I—”

“Hm?” Ronan had moved on to kissing his neck, distracting him from this very important line of thought.

“It was the best Thanksgiving break I’ve ever had.”

Ronan paused the kissing to look back at him. Adam’s hands came up to hold his face and he smiled when he realized Ronan’s cheeks were warm.

“Awesome,” Ronan managed, after a second.

“Thank you,” Adam said earnestly.

“Adam—”

“I love you.”

Adam felt Ronan inhale, and then he saw him smile.

“I love you, too. Dipshit.” He dug his face again on Adam’s neck.

Adam laughed.

“I actually thought it was weird, that you called your boyfriend that.”

“You are weird. And a dipshit. Therefore.”

“I’ll tell Gansey he can buy me that fiddle leaf fig.”

“And why the fuck are you talking about Gansey right now?” Ronan looked outraged, but Adam knew better.

He nodded to himself.

“I’m going to buy a lock for my dorm’s room, too. Not that I don’t trust Carol, but I’m gonna do it. _Shit_. I have to call her.”

Ronan’s hug didn’t let him move.

“I texted her from my phone earlier. Told her you’ll probably be in class in the afternoon.”

“Why not in the morning? I’m fine now.”

“_Because_” Ronan licked Adam’s neck to prove his point, “you’re staying in bed for a bit longer. And so you smartass can start thinking about a good cover story.”

Adam rolled his eyes.

“Well, what did she say?”

“Dunno. She called but I wasn’t gonna pick up.”

“Of course not.”

“’Course.”

Adam snorted. He actually had to call Blue too, and thank Declan and Matthew, and probably text Carol for real, and maybe evaluate his thoughts on Mr. Collins, his Elementary school nurse, and why he hadn’t let him help when that was all the man was trying to do. But the curtains were closed, and Ronan had paid for the night in this cold room, and it was still hours until dawn. Adam only hoped they wouldn’t fall from the bed while he was fighting Ronan for his turn on doing the kissing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! When I started this didn’t honestly think I’d write over 20k words of cute little!Adam dealing with his trauma, so thanks for staying around to see how this actually paid off.
> 
> The epilogue after this epilogue [on Adam's phone](https://hklnvgl.tumblr.com/post/188341077705/from-adams-phone-ii) .
> 
> I appreciate all the comments and kudos and nice words ♥


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